Shabs and Streets

This is not a post about football. Just thought I'd get that in before I lose half my audience. It's also not about chess. However, I have to start with a reference to a chess-playing footballer, otherwise you wouldn't understand the title. 

Eberichi Eze is a top class footballer who plays for England's best team - Arsenal - in the Premier League. He is also a competition-winning chess player. And his friends call him "Ebs".

Now you get it - the title refers to Shabana Mahmood and Wes Streeting. Get it?

Why am I talking about them? Because, in my opinion, the survival of the Labour Party as an electoral force may well depend on them. It's hard to know how Cabinet Ministers are performing; it's a complex job and most of the work they do is in the background but they are most often judged by their public performances. My (completely uninformed) instinct is that the Prime Minister has actually got the best people into these two key Cabinet posts. Solve the NHS and the Home Office/immigration problems and the rest is fluff. No-one cares about Gaza, Ukraine, football regulators, fiscal rules and the like when they vote. Get me a GP appointment, rapid cancer tests, shorter waiting lists, stop the boats, process asylum seekers quickly and fairly and....we'll vote for you. And just maybe the workforce will become more productive.

You might argue that economic issues like taxation levels and the price of food will carry huge weight but it just feels there's no quick fix; the economy will take longer than five years to get back on track. The same is probably true of housing: you almost certainly can't get enough houses built to meet the target of 1.5 million. Welfare entitlements/benefits is such a fraught issue that the politics vs economics will thwart real progress.

Then there's defence spending. No-one seriously believes the Russians are going to invade the UK (or that, if they did, their management of the country would be any worse than what we already have), so a target of spending 5% of GDP on nuclear missiles, aircraft carriers, drones and the like just seems to "working people" like a colossal waste of money which could better be spent on more urgent things.

I'm not saying the economy doesn't matter. I'm not saying security doesn't matter. I'm not saying you shouldn't at least try to solve the problems with housing and benefits. It's just that people matter and their lives are constrained by so many negatives at the moment that a few simple (I'm not saying easy) NHS and immigration solutions could make the world of difference to how the country feels. And if they feel better, there's at least a chance they'll vote for you.

So, Shabs and Streets, I'm with you. See it, say it, sort it.