Let Them Eat Praise

Teachers, nurses and other traditional targets of ministerial humour have reacted with their accustomed ingratitude to Team Starmer's latest derisory public sector pay awards, which start at one-tenth of a percentage point above the rate of inflation and rise all the way to slightly less than two percentage points. Wideboy Wesley Streeting proclaimed that Team Starmer would never be able to reverse the Conservatives' vandalism in under a year, which is certainly true enough: at current rates it could take up to a quarter of a millennium. In order to ensure that this pledge at least will not be broken, Team Starmer has very prudently ensured that the pay rises will not be fully funded, so that the proper recognition of public sector staff's outstanding work will entail painful decisions whose consequences can then be blamed on freeloading nurses and handout-guzzling teachers before being duly resolved in accordance with the national religion and the legitimate interests of private profit.