Labour’s first 100 days have reeked of greed, stupidity and sheer spite. So do you feel like you’ve been cheated?

AFTER their first hundred days in power, Tony Blair’s New Labor government was on cloud nine.

Blair surrounded herself with talent. There was slick, smart competence everywhere.

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Gordon Brown became Chancellor, a position he would hold for more than ten years, immediately making the Bank of England independent.

David Blunkett was Minister of Education. Robin Cook, the Secretary of State.

With two fists, “Two Jags” John Prescott was deputy prime minister.

New Labor was caring, socially conscious – but fanatically pro-aspiration, pro-growth and pro-prosperity.

The nation felt good.

But what will we remember of our first 100 days in power under Sir Keir Starmer’s Labor government?

Labor is robbing ten million seniors of the winter fuel allowance while buying off the party’s union paymasters.

Labor hands sovereignty of the strategically crucial Chagos Islands to Mauritius – 1,300 miles away – and encourages every nationalist politician in Argentina and Spain with plans for the Falklands and Gibraltar.

And greedy, freebie-loving Labor politicians sticking their snouts out of the trough and asking: so what?

There was a revealing conversation on Sky News this week between Culture Minister Lisa Nandy and presenter Kay Burley.

Nandy squirmed under Kay’s questioning that so many senior Labor figures had free tickets to see Taylor Swift, and tried to counter-attack, vehemently rejecting any allegations of wrongdoing.

“Most of Sky News was at these events and in the same boxes too,” Nandy sneered. “You were there.”

Big mistake.

“I paid for my tickets in advance eight months earlier,” Kay replied calmly, as the ground opened and swallowed the stunned Secretary of Labor.

Because Lisa Nandy clearly could NOT imagine a world where a public figure could actually pay his own way.

This is the Imelda Marcos school of socialism.

Whatever you want, from new dresses for the wife to glasses, suits, Taylor Swift tickets, great seats at the football – someone else will always foot the bill.

Labour’s first 100 days have reeked of greed, stupidity and sheer spite.

From January, private school fees are no longer exempt from VAT.

Hateful policies

The rich won’t notice, but an estimated 13,000 children of ordinary working people will have to find public schools.

Many of them will be in the middle of their GCSE and A-levels.

It is unforgivably cruel that Starmer’s Labor have chosen not to delay their hateful policies until the start of a school year.

There was never euphoria around Starmer, but the country wished him well. We were relieved he wasn’t Jeremy Corbyn.

And after the Tory chaos, five years of dull stability and competence seemed attractive even to those of us who didn’t vote Labour.

A Labor government seemed inevitable.

The Tories were doomed from the moment the Queen was pictured at her beloved husband’s funeral on April 17, 2021 – a tiny figure in black, masked and alone, following the rules we all followed.

When we knew that Boris Johnson and his lackeys had not followed the rules with the same rigor behind closed doors – even on the eve of Prince Philip’s socially distanced funeral – BoJo was delighted, and so were the Tories.

They call it the optics. But it’s really about basic human decency.

And that is why there is something so disgusting today about this give-give-give government filling their boots even as the country counts the pennies.

With Keir Starmer we thought we got the down-to-earth prosecutor, a dull but decent civil servant who is light years away from Tory sleazy.

Have you ever felt like you’ve been cheated on?

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PERSONALLY, I am sad that James Cleverly, the candidate who terrified more than just Reform UK, did not make it to the final round of the Tory leadership contest.

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And the way the Tories are burning out their leaders, James Cleverly probably won’t get another chance to be leader for, oh, at least eighteen months or so.

Britt’s right: it’s Goodnight, cinema, unless you’re Bond

BRITT EKLAND was a good Bond girl in a mediocre 007 film and played Mary Goodnight in 1974’s The Man with the Golden Gun – the dog days for the world’s favorite spy.

“This series, which has been scraping the bottom of the barrel for a while, has now hit the bottom,” sighed one critic of Roger Moore’s second outing as 007.

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But Britt – Swedish, blonde, perfectly swinging sixties icon – always seemed born to be a Bond girl.

So when former Mary Goodnight ponders the future of the Bond franchise, the world listens. “I believe that the cinema will disappear and that streaming is the best choice,” says Britt.

“Yes, a new Bond film will sustain cinema for a while, but I’m sure streaming is the way to make money in the future.”

Our viewing habits have changed beyond recognition since Bond raised an interested eyebrow at Mary Goodnight’s bikini in The Man with the Golden Gun fifty years ago.

But when it was released in cinemas in 2021, the last 007 film made £600 million.

James Bond will never have a problem packing your local cinema.

Once they figure out how to resurrect a hero they killed in his last appearance.

A NUMBER OF Oasis fans in Manchester have prepared for the band’s homecoming gig at Heaton Park next year by burying recreational drugs in the bushes.

This seems a bit optimistic.

By the time Oasis start their tour next summer, it will be 25 years since I saw them play Wembley in the company of 90,000 crazy boys and girls (but mostly boys).

All those Oasis fans who were in their teens and twenties in 2000 will now be in their forties and fifties, where – believe me, guys – the very first thing you need to do is use your short-term memory.

By the time the Oasis tour finally starts, they’ll never be able to remember where they buried their stash.

FILM SNOWSTORM

COLOMBIAN-American actress Rachel Zegler, star of Disney’s Snow White remake, says her character’s name has nothing to do with the color of her skin.

Rachel insists the name comes from a little-known version of the story in which Snow White survived a snowstorm as a baby.

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“And so the king and queen decided to call her Snow White, to remind her of her resilience,” Rachel says unconvincingly.

Rachel Zegler is a great actress.

She was great as Maria in Steven Spielberg’s remake of West Side Story.

But sorry – Snow White didn’t get her handle because she was unlucky with the weather.

The Brothers Grimm’s original 1812 fairy tale specifically speaks of: “Skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony.”

This new Snow White has already found itself in controversy over – well, everything, really.

The Seven Dwarfs are computer-generated images, provoking anger from actors with dwarfism that their community is being erased.

The handsome prince is described by Zegler as a ‘stalker’, which does not raise much hope for their relationship.

But Snow White is a fairy tale from the early 19th century that became famous worldwide through a 1938 Hollywood animation.

And it can never be as woke as modern Hollywood wants it to be.

THIS week, a bill to legalize assisted dying in England and Wales will be introduced in the House of Commons, with a debate and vote later this year.

If you’ve ever seen a loved one die, you know that life is ultimately nothing but suffering.

Morally, legally and medically – assisted dying will always be an impossibly difficult subject.

But if someone has reached a point during their terminal illness where their suffering is unbearable, they should not have to go abroad to die.

Harry remains strong

IN 1953, the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh left their two children behind for six months as they embarked on a tour of the Commonwealth.

Before her first birthday, Queen Elizabeth herself was left alone for six months while her parents went on a six-month tour of Australia and New Zealand.

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When the Queen left her children, Prince Charles was five and Princess Anne was three.

Exactly the same age as Harry and Meghan’s children, Archie and Lilibet, are now.

There is speculation about the state of Harry and Meghan’s marriage, as they often perform solo these days.

But I think they’re just doing their best to make sure that when one of them is away, the other stays home.

Parenting has changed in our lifetimes – for the royal family and for the rest of us.

If royals left their small children alone for six months today, someone would call social services.