Keir starmer

Santa will have a tricky time this year fulfilling all the Christmas wish lists in Westminster. Keir Starmer is desperately hoping for a change in the political weather and Kemi Badenoch would like an in with Donald Trump. Ed Davey dreams that Labour’s electoral troubles will get so bad that proportional representation starts to look appealing. Nigel Farage, meanwhile, wants to avoid what usually happens with him and keep his party from falling out. Come the new year, all four leaders will have their eyes on May’s local elections. The 21 county councils, ten unitary authorities and one metropolitan district are up for grabs for the first time since 2021. Back then Boris Johnson was riding a wave of popularity after the vaccine rollout and the Tories won Hartlepool from Labour.

Arriving on stage to accept ‘Newcomer of the Year’ at The Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards, Nigel Farage gave a warning to the Westminster establishment. ‘I’ve got a bit of a shock for you,’ he said. ‘If you think that I and four other people – the newcomers into parliament this year in the general election – were a shock, I’m very sorry but at the next election in 2029 or before, there will be hundreds of newcomers under the Reform UK label.’ He added: ‘We are about to witness a political revolution the likes of which we have not seen since Labour after the first world war. Politics is about to change in the most astonishing way. Newcomers will win the next election. Thank you very much.

I was thrilled to learn that our government intends to enjoy an ‘open’ relationship with China – one of my favourite countries, as I am sure it is yours. Sir Keir Starmer announced this intention when he bumped into Xi Jinping at the G20 beano in Rio de Janeiro. He also said: ‘We want our relations to be consistent, durable, respectful, as we have agreed, avoid surprises where possible. The UK will be a predictable, consistent, sovereign actor committed to the rule of law.’ Those agreeable adjectives are all Keir’s – I didn’t slip any in, surreptitiously, Not even ‘predictable’, which I assume was there to reinforce the earlier commitment to not surprising the Chinese, perhaps by jumping out from behind a hedge and demanding the return of Hong Kong.

In the months before the general election, the Labour party had an internal debate about starting a ‘national conversation’ on assisted dying. Keir Starmer had promised Esther Rantzen, the veteran broadcaster with terminal cancer, that if elected he would hold a vote on it. Wes Streeting, in the health brief, argued that it might be the time to start a wider debate with the country on the thorny issue. However, he faced pushback from those in the shadow cabinet mindful of the fact there could be an election within months. Talking about death wasn’t exactly the feel-good change factor they were aiming for. ‘We didn’t want to become the death party,’ recalls a colleague. ‘It could basically blow up the family courts. Is that such a good idea?

Of all Keir Starmer’s appointments to government, none have been so personal or politically significant as his choice of Attorney General. The Prime Minister’s politics have been shaped, refined and hardened by his time as a human-rights barrister. The role of Attorney General – the government’s chief legal adviser and the minister responsible for the Crown Prosecution Service, which Starmer ran as director of public prosecutions – is of critical importance to him. While the PM may or may not take a close interest in who is minister for planning, veterans or food security, he will have thought very carefully about who should be his AG. The choice of Richard Hermer is deeply revealing – and should be profoundly worrying.