The cowboys are running the country

This was probably Sir Keir Starmer's best line at today's Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs), the first of the autumn term as the House of Commons returns to business after the summer recess.

It's unlikely to be business as usual, however. We are clearly in General Election mode after the RAAC crisis in schools and other public buildings gifted Labour a new focus and impetus at the very beginning of the new term. Coming after a long summer of humiliation over the government's mishandling of the migrant crisis, the surprising thing was just how bullish Rishi Sunak was in his responses. One might have expected a modicum of humility, a little embarrassment even, but not a bit of it. Sunak is possibly the only person in the country who believes his own publicity. He is either utterly stupid, utterly shameless or utterly deluded - maybe all three.

Whatever, the starting pistol for the race towards the General Election was resoundingly fired today and we can look forward to a protacted campaign between now and January 2025. Not that anyone seriously expects it to run the full course. A consensus was forming around October next year but it could even come as early as next May if the Tories buckle under the weight of burgeoning winter crises and throw in the towel. My suspicion, given Sunny Sunak's Pollyanna-ish disposition, is that he'll cling on to power as long as he possibly can in the hope that an unexpected upturn in the economy, or some other miraculous deus ex machina, will save his bacon. Pigs might fly!

However, Sunak will have taken into account the likelihood that his premiership is doomed anyway and that if he wants to enjoy the trappings of power (all those helicopter flights, all that international summitry!) he'll need to max out his term in office because it will be his last. His chances of winning an election diminish daily with every new crisis that emerges. After thirteen years of Tory misrule he will be the convenient fall guy and, even were he to win (unlikely but not impossible - think John Major in 1992), he will be defenestrated by his own party in favour of someone more palatable to his backbenchers. Sunak is clearly the caretaker and, as in Harold Pinter's play of the same name, it won't go well for him.

Apart from Sunak and a few of his recently-elected backbenchers most Tory MPs have probably had enough and will gladly leave the sorting out of their shitshow to Starmer and Co. And what a poisoned chalice that will be - almost worse than our rivers and seas! It is likely to take at least two full terms in office (a decade in other words) to sort out the mess. But, of course, the situation won't be static, the linked climate and migrant crises will only get worse and, like the Hydra's head, for every problem Labour solves a new one will emerge. To pursue the classical analogy, it will be a Sisyphean task - and a thankless one - so Labour should be careful what it wishes for.

Victory may prove Pyrrhic.

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