If Starmer has nothing to hide, why refuse a national inquiry? The British aren't stupid - Royston Smith

The economy, unsurprisingly, is not growing, nor is it likely to. In fact, some economists are predicting a recession made entirely by Downing Street. Inflation is rising, interest rates are stubbornly high, and unemployment is starting to increase.

UK business confidence has dropped to its lowest level since Liz Truss’s mini-budget, according to the British Chambers of Commerce.

Immigration is out of control and while I wouldn’t defend the Conservative’s record, they were at least trying to tackle it.

Members of the Cabinet, with one or two notable exceptions, are mostly invisible and when they do grace the airwaves with an occasional appearance, they seem genuinely offended to be asked to answer for their policies or performance.

The war in Europe rages on into another year and our new Prime Minister, who has been happy to rub shoulders with leaders around the world at every opportunity, hasn’t yet bothered to visit Ukraine to show his support.

Instead, he has spent most of his time defending his shocking list of freebies, access to Number 10, the lacklustre performance of his cabinet colleagues and his time as the Director of Public Prosecutions.

And rather than face up to the challenges facing our country, he allows himself to be drawn into an unedifying spat with Elon Musk. Who cares what Musk says, he is an observer, nothing more. If the Government has nothing to hide about the heinous grooming gang scandal, why not just agree to a public inquiry? The longer these things are allowed to fester the more people will begin to believe there is a cover-up. But Keir Starmer continues to dig his heels in and in so doing, alienates another huge chunk of the electorate.

Labour has got off to the most awful start imaginable. The British people are not stupid. They see the hundreds of thousands of civil servants in Whitehall and around the country, many working from home, they see pay rises for public sector workers with no requirement to do better or increase productivity, they see their services cut and their taxes up. They are being made to pay more for less and they won’t put up with it.

Government - both local and national - delivers mediocrity because most of us can’t go anywhere else. Most people can’t pay for private healthcare or private education. They can’t choose who empties their bins or cleans their streets. They must take what they’re given, and what they’re given is frequently poor.

Despite his claims of hardship, Starmer has never had to face any of this, but many of his MPs have. And they are fed up with the way the Prime Minister treats them. His backbenchers won’t accept the PM’s aloofness, arrogance and petulance much longer and neither will the voting public.

Labour’s lack of political experience is evident in everything they do. From attacks on pensioners, farmers and workers to the perceived cover-up of Asian grooming gangs, if there is a wrong decision to make, they make it.

Who would have thought there would be rumblings about the Prime Minister’s position just six months into office? If he doesn’t turn things around in the next six months the voices for change will grow louder and we all know how that ends.