Nick Tyrone

Keir Starmer's strategy has always been to wait cautiously for events to unfold, rarely playing too bold a move. When he does act, it is usually after a long period of hibernation.  Starmer sat in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet while many Labour MPs who felt roughly the same way he did about Corbyn’s project either rebelled from the backbenches or even left the party altogether. He ran for leader on a Corbyn-continuity platform, even though it’s fairly clear by now that this isn’t what he truly believes in, simply because it was the safest option. Since becoming leader of the opposition, he has avoided making policy announcements and has instead waited to pick off the government when it has been seen to make a mistake.

It’s clear now that Covid is going to be with us for the long haul. Most sane voices are talking about the remainder of the crisis in terms of years, not months. Yet the government has still not been able to take itself out of short-term mode. They seem to be holding out for a vaccine miracle. Stranger still, the opposition is still in short-term mode on Covid as well. I don’t think this can continue without becoming a large problem for Starmer, both internally within Labour and also in the polls. Starmer’s plan when it comes to the crisis so far is simple to explain. He wants to support the government wherever possible to demonstrate two things.

Since the general election, many members of the cabinet besides the prime minister have been prevalent in the media. Rishi Sunak has become an out and out superstar, even occasionally lauded by portions of the centre-left media. Matt Hancock, for good or ill, has become a constant presence throughout the crisis. Yet it’s amazing how little impact the shadow cabinet, other than Starmer, has managed to make during the same period. This could be part of a deliberate strategy by Labour – aimed at establishing Starmer’s ‘new leadership’ and worrying about the rest later – but sooner or later, his lieutenants are going to have to start shining. Otherwise, they will all be defined by the Tories in the worst possible terms when the time is right.

The main thing to say about Boris Johnson’s speech at this year’s online Tory conference is that it captures the present mood of the Conservative party almost perfectly. The problem with that is, that mood is one of confusion and soul searching about what the Conservative party actually exists to do. For a start, there is a need to address the topic of Boris’s missing mojo. This has been talked about to death, and so I will only say that complaints that he wasn’t at his shiny best are a little unfair. He didn’t have a crowd to feed off of today, which in and of itself took the speech’s energy levels down several notches. Also, he’s the prime minister at a time of national crisis.

We seem to be entering another era of political party expansion. There’s Laurence Fox’s new party, not to mention the quiet, faint resurgence of the Brexit Party that is likely to become louder soon enough. The peculiar thing about this is that all political parties are fairly terrible, and most of the great British public not only knows that but uses this knowledge as the backdrop to every political calculation they will make throughout their lives. I myself have been a member of a political party; I was a Lib Dem for about a decade. This was an odd move as I am far from a joiner of anything. Yet I’m a liberal, and as the party seemed to be going in a direction I could relate to, I hopped on board.

The UK is set to offer the EU a three-year transition period on fishing as a means of setting aside the issue as a block to a potential deal. What to do about fish has been a major impediment in the negotiations throughout the post-referendum period. And it appears that this government wants to repeat what has happened whenever a major Brexit-related impasse has been hit in the past — just find a way to kick the whole thing into the long grass.

It was only a matter of time, in retrospect. There is a new political party in town. This one is called Reclaim and is the brainchild of the actor and singer Laurence Fox. I’m sure all of you know who Fox is already, but if not, here’s a refresher: earlier this year, Fox went on BBC Question Time. While on the programme he said some fairly innocuous things that for some strange reason blew up into a new battleground in the culture wars. Since then, Fox has become something of a hero to a certain segment of social media while being demonised by another. He’s now decided to start a ‘new political movement which promises to make our future a shared endeavour, not a divisive one’.

The Liberal Democrats are putting a motion to their virtual conference this weekend to end the party’s commitment to trying to rejoin the EU. This will annoy many of their activists. It will convince some pro-Europeans that the time to rip up their membership cards is now (and, for many others, to feel smug about having always doubted the party). So what's the upside? There isn't one. Instead, this is another in a long line of useless moves by the party, built on trying to get people who will never like the Lib Dems to change their minds. To make matters worse, the motion is predictably wishy washy in what it sets out. It commits the party to 'keep all options open' in regard to Britain’s relationship with the EU.

The main Tory attack on Starmer since he became leader of the Labour party is that he is 'too much of a lawyer'; dull and metropolitan. The problem with this line is that it complements the narrative Starmer is trying to build himself, namely that he is competent while Boris is not. As such, it is worse than ineffective as a strategy — it is actually counterproductive. What is strangest about the continued use of the lawyer strategy is that there is an alternative attack on Starmer staring the Tories in the face, one they have not yet touched. When Sir Keir ran to be Jeremy Corbyn’s successor, he rolled out ten pledges that at the time he said would define his leadership of the Labour party.

Could Britain be heading for a second lockdown? Boris Johnson says his government is doing 'everything in our power' to prevent one, but failed to rule it out if coronavirus cases don't stop rising. Yet even if the Prime Minister does end up ordering Britain back indoors, it's worth asking whether he has the political capital to carry out such an order. Amidst a stormy few weeks in which the PM has alienated both wings of his own party, angered the frontrunner to become the next US president and been blasted by most of the press, I'm not convinced. When the first lockdown happened in March, there was a lot of goodwill throughout the country for both the idea of locking down and the government’s handling of the crisis.

Some Tory MPs are worried about a strategy that the party is apparently seriously considering adopting at the next general election. It is sometimes referred to as the ‘30-10 strategy’. The ‘30’ denotes the solid, unshakable Tory base; people who will supposedly vote for the Conservatives no matter what. The ‘10’ represents the Brexit add-ons; Ukip and Labour voters who went Tory in December 2019 because they wanted to ‘get Brexit done’. The ‘30’ can be taken for granted by nature, leading to everything being done to keep the Brexiteer ‘10’ onside.

If the UK government was just going to ignore international law, why did we bother leaving the EU at all? Before anyone gets too jumpy, allow me to explain. If you look at the Brussels laws the UK had to accept during its time as a member state, you’ll find that the government was almost always its own worst enemy. There was a tendency to ‘gold plate’ EU directives, meaning we would take the most extreme interpretation of the rules in question. Most EU directives have annexes that allow member states to play with any restrictions. While many member states shaped the rules around their needs, Britain had a tendency to apply the rules to their limits.

Like most things Brexit related, it depends on who you believe. The EU is concerned over the announcement that the government will be introducing legislation that could override portions of the Withdrawal Agreement, in particular the Northern Ireland Protocol. The UK government insists that the changes they wish to introduce are 'limited and reasonable' and will not violate the treaty. I truly hope it is our government which is right here. If Boris really is planning to violate the Withdrawal Agreement, signed with the EU earlier this year, that would be a grave error. The logic of threatening the European Union with legislation that changes portions of the Withdrawal Agreement could be to send a message.

One of the main things that's holding up an UK-EU trade deal is the demand that the UK sticks to current state aid rules. Boris and Frost are refusing to budge. They want the freedom to do whatever they wish with state aid in post-Brexit Britain. Restrictions around state aid spending are in place to ensure governments do not prop up failing industries or distort the free market by handing out public money to troubled sectors – either halting their collapse or giving them an artificial competitive advantage.  What was the point of defeating Corbyn only to ape Corbynism in such a vital way? When you get rid of state aid rules, horrible things can happen, particularly from a centre-right perspective.

Since becoming Labour leader, Keir Starmer has tried to establish in as many voter’s minds as possible the idea that his party has changed irrevocably from the Corbyn era. This has mostly taken the form of responding to what the government does by trying to label it as blundering, contrasted against Starmer who is alternatively painted as a paragon of competence. What has been notably missing though is any real idea of what a Labour government under Starmer might actually do in terms of policy. The truth is, this doesn’t actually matter, at least for the time being. The Labour leader not only has the space to continue being vague on policy, he should carry on doing so.

It seems as though Layla Moran's offer to make the Lib Dems 'more radical than Labour' has been decisively rejected. Her rival Ed Davey won over 60 per cent of the votes cast and is the party's new leader after an interminable and dire leadership contest. After the result was announced, Davey got up and gave a short, remarkably good speech. It was humble and to the point. The Lib Dems have lost touch with most voters, he said, and he was going to make it his mission to try and win back as many as he could by getting in touch with their true concerns. His words immediately reminded me of the way Keir Starmer had won the leadership of his party in April. Has Ed Davey pulled the same trick here?

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.

Throughout the last four years, you could be forgiven for thinking that everyone in Britain has been extremely passionate about Brexit one way or another. The truth is, most people are sick to death of the whole debate. This was the reason ‘Get Brexit Done’ was such an effective slogan; most voters wanted the topic laid to rest. It is this general apathy that I believe is informing Keir Starmer’s approach to Brexit as Labour leader, combined with the knowledge that while most people are sick of Brexit, we are about to enter a whole new phase of it that can’t be ignored. Passionate Remainers complain that Starmer hasn’t been anti-Brexit enough since he became leader – where was the plea to extend the transition period?

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 Labour’s strategy in Lib-Con seats at the next election.