Steve Coogan has accused Sir Keir Starmer of paving the way for Reform UK, describing the Labour government’s policies as “putting Band-Aids on the gash in the side of the Titanic”.
The 59-year-old actor, best known for playing Alan Partridge, has previously publicly backed the Labour Party but threw his support behind the Green Party last year.
The comic told The Guardian that Sir Keir and his colleagues have “leant into supporting a broken system” and are governing without “sincerity or any kind of firmly held ideological belief”.
He further accused the government of a “derogation of all the principles they were supposed to represent”.
“The success of Reform, I lay squarely at the feet of the neoliberal consensus, which has let down working people for the last 40 years and they’re fed up,” he told the paper, speaking ahead of his address to the Co-op Congress in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.
“It doesn’t matter who they vote for, nothing changes for them.”
“Keir Starmer and the Labour government have leant into supporting a broken system,” he added. “Their modus operandi is to mitigate the worst excesses of a broken system and all that is is managed decline. What they’re doing is putting Band-Aids on the gash in the side of the Titanic.”
Continuing his scathing critique, the Philomena star said that the Labour government was “no different from a Conservative government in neglecting ordinary people” and suggested that they were preoccupied with “gesture politics” and “people inside the M25”.
He went on to suggest that the government’s lack of support for ordinary people could “pave the way” for the success of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
“Reform couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery but if there’s no alternative you understand why working people will make that choice,” he claimed.
It’s not the first time that Coogan has criticised Starmer this week. Just a few days ago, he told the i newspaper that the current prime minister had prompted him to admire Margaret Thatcher “for at least having an ideology”.
“I don’t think he has any ideology,” Coogan told the paper. “I think every decision he makes is, ‘What is the most politically expedient thing to say and think?’”
“It makes me admire – which I never thought I’d say – Margaret Thatcher for at least having an ideology and a point of view,” he added. “And a vision. I didn’t agree with it, but at least she had one.”
