Labour

Keir Starmer has made life difficult for Boris Johnson this week with his demand for a circuit-breaker lockdown. But the Labour leader’s colleague Andy Burnham is currently presenting a far greater threat to the Prime Minister. On Thursday, the Mayor of Greater Manchester gave a furious speech in which he accused the government of being ‘willing to sacrifice jobs here to save them elsewhere’ while treating his area like ‘canaries in the coalmine for an experimental regional lockdown strategy’. The government, he argued, was treating the North with ‘contempt’ by telling regional leaders there wasn’t enough money to protect jobs during the new restrictions while spending large sums on consultants

Labour is gearing up for its first big Commons clash since returning from recess this afternoon, with shadow education secretary Kate Green taking on Gavin Williamson after his statement on the opening of schools and colleges. On the surface, the party has had its easiest summer in a long while, with no real factional battles or rows about its leader. Keir Starmer has bedded in quietly, and some Labour MPs have been able to switch off from thinking about the party for the first time in years. MPs who thought their party might have been over a year ago are now in an upbeat mood. ‘This is the first summer

John McDonnell, Corbyn’s right hand man for four and a half years, was full of praise when asked about the official opposition’s handling of the Covid crisis. ‘Keir’s got this exactly right’ the ex-shadow chancellor told John Pienaar. But many of Corbyn’s loyal supporters didn’t agree; sparking an internal Labour argument between the party’s warring sides. It is tempting to point to the scrap and claim that it is yet more evidence of the difficulties Starmer faces to get Labour winning again, as the party’s internal battles never seem to end and in fact, are now being fought out between ever smaller factions. But another, more positive way for Starmer

The myth that is developing goes like this: Labour can’t win enough seats to form a majority government at the next election, however much the Tories may tank. They will need the SNP and almost certainly the Liberal Democrats to rule. Therefore, Labour needs to stand down in English seats where the Lib Dems have a clear shot at the Conservative party. There are several problems with this myth, but one that isn’t being talked about: the price the Lib Dems would extract for bringing a Labour minority to power would be steep, and not worth it from a Labour perspective. If Labour leader Keir Starmer is wise, this must inform

Ever since Keir Starmer became Labour leader, there have been calls for him to publicly embrace Brexit to win back seats in the ‘Red Wall’. Starmer has stayed quiet on Europe since his victory, to the consternation of many Remainers who wanted him to push the importance of extending the transition period, before that opportunity passed. This silence has been wise on Starmer’s part – and he should continue to stay silent on the European question for the time being. The calls for Starmer to announce that he’s converted to Brexit misunderstand several things, including: the nature of the electoral coalition Starmer needs to build, why Red Wall seats fell

It’s happening again. Despite having lost four general elections in a row, supporters of the Labour party have already convinced themselves that Boris Johnson is doomed and they are on course for victory next time. Their reasoning was expertly set out by Andrew Rawnsley, still the doyen of left-of-centre commentators, in his Observer column on Sunday: Jeremy Corbyn was a gift to the Tories, but now Labour has the much more ‘capable and substantial’ Keir Starmer at the helm and the government doesn’t know how to deal with him; Boris Johnson’s basic lack of competence has been shown up by coronavirus; people are warming to the technocratic Starmer and while

Usually, MPs think debate is quite an important part of their job description – after all, the entire purpose of the House of Commons is to pit the opposition against the government of the day, to scrutinise their decisions, and in doing so make better policy.  That appears to have passed the Labour MP and Corbyn ally Nadia Whittome by though. Instead, debating some issues is bad, according to the Member of Parliament. Tweeting to promote a piece on trans rights in the Independent today, the new Labour MP said that debate acts as ‘a foot in the door for doubt and hatred’. https://twitter.com/NadiaWhittomeMP/status/1286357272025796608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw Mr S understands that Labour has a zero-tolerance

Will Labour ever stop pushing for punitive taxation? Not content with gifting the Conservatives an 80 seat majority in December, the supposedly more moderate Labour party under Keir Starmer is already dreaming up ways it can extract large sums from our pockets. Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds floated a ‘wealth tax’ at the weekend, so that the burden of paying for the Covid 19 crisis might fall upon the ‘very best off people’. Except it won’t be the very best-off people who get whacked by a wealth tax, as she should surely know. The highly mobile global super rich wouldn’t hang around for five minutes after a Labour government announced a

It has become a truism that there are not enough liberal voters to get Labour a majority at the next general election. That Labour need to recapture some of the socially conservative vote to win. That they need the ‘red wall’ seats back to give them even the slimmest chance of victory. But for a period last year, however brief, the Lib Dems were as high as 24 per cent in the national polls. If Starmer can tap into this potential electorate I believe he can win, and Labour can become the biggest party in England and Wales – which would probably allow the party to govern. It looks like

By most measures Keir Starmer has, politically speaking, won the war when it comes to Covid. Since becoming Labour leader in early April he has hardly put a foot wrong, balancing his desire to appear supportive of Boris Johnson’s government during this unique moment of national crisis while retaining the freedom to expose and criticise its many mistakes. But as Britain comes out of lockdown, can he win the peace? In the early stages of the lockdown voters were uncertain about the new Labour leader and, understandably, rallied behind Johnson: according to YouGov, in April 46 per cent thought Boris Johnson was best qualified to be Prime Minister, while only

It has been a remarkable week. Boris Johnson’s refusal to sack Dominic Cummings for what the vast majority of Britons consider a flagrant breach of lockdown rules has caused his personal ratings to tumble. According to YouGov his party has seen a 15 per cent lead over Labour collapse to just 6 per cent in a matter of days. Johnson’s insistence that Cummings has done no wrong and that the country should move on from the issue and focus on tackling Covid suggests the Prime Minister hopes the fickle British public will eventually lose interest. Perhaps he is right: and with the next election four years away there is still

These are discombobulating times. A deadly pandemic; the United States at sea, China belligerent and the EU at war with itself. British politics was in flux before the virus hit. Now it is vertiginous. The Tory party, long seen as the guardian of the status quo, has been forced to change tack as it deals with the fallout. Keir Starmer, recently elected as Labour leader, will play a vital role in this realignment – but not one we would once have envisaged. Starmer’s election as Labour leader in the midst of coronavirus is a good thing. He is the anti-Corbyn for a Labour party looking for calm and stability after

It was all going so well for Sir Keir Starmer. He won the Labour leadership handsomely, appointed a fresh shadow cabinet, and was riding a wave of blessed non-scrutiny thanks to Covid-19. He had begun to make amends to the Jewish community for his party’s racist vendetta against them and there was a solid chance that political correspondents would learn how to spell his name. Then, it leaked. An 860-page dossier prepared in the final months of Corbyn’s tenure which, going by the reports of those who have seen it, essentially exculpates the party of mishandling anti-Semitism charges. It says these complaints were not treated differently, a central allegation made

Keir Starmer, the newly elected leader of the Labour party, has taken no prisoners with his cabinet reshuffle. Corbyn allies like Richard Burgon are out, and Ed Miliband is back. Here is the full make-up of Starmer’s top team: Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer: Anneliese DoddsFormerly: John McDonnell An Oxford PPE graduate, Dodds is a long time supporter of Starmer’s leadership campaign. She has served as a shadow Treasury minister since July 2017. She had even been tipped for promotion by the former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell in early March, as he said he was ‘hoping she gets a significant role in the new administration’. Dodds is the first woman to be

It was not the acceptance speech he could have anticipated making when the campaign for the Labour leadership began many months ago, but it was one Keir Starmer used to define the type of leader he would be during the pandemic, and beyond. Recorded before he was confirmed as Jeremy Corbyn’s successor, Starmer spent most of his speech addressing, not Labour’s electoral crisis, but the national emergency provoked by Covid-19. Significantly, he talked to the country first, rather than his party’s members – 56.2 per cent of whom had just made him leader. Starmer positioned his Labour party as the solution to the country’s current ills Elected promising to reunite

What will we do without Jeremy Corbyn? We may never find out given how long it’s taking him to leave the stage. Even Sinatra’s farewell tour didn’t last this long. The problem is that Corbyn wants to be useful. While that would certainly be a change of pace, it places the onus on others to find a use for him. His disciples propose that he be kept on the front bench, perhaps as shadow foreign secretary, marking their progression through all six stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance and Richard Burgon. There is a cruelty to all this. No one who has watched the video of Corbyn ambling around

It is not often these days that one gets a chance to praise the Labour party. Even with Jeremy Corbyn soon on his way out, the party has learned nothing from its election drubbing and seems determined instead to make the same mistakes. But it has, somewhat remarkably perhaps, covered itself in glory this week. And it would be wrong to pass up the opportunity to praise Corbyn for the way his party has so far responded to the coronavirus outbreak. Perhaps you have not noticed how they have reacted to the crisis? In which case, that in itself speaks volumes. Because you will no doubt have seen the way Piers Morgan has responded