Politics Archives

Tuesday

28 Sep 2021

Labour is still overrun with anti-Israel cranks

As unhinged Labour conference motions go, the party’s anti-Aukus resolution will likely capture the headlines. The text describes the new defence pact between Australia, the UK and the US as a ‘dangerous move that will undermine world peace’. Sir Keir Starmer is on record backing the alliance but the Labour leader can at least take comfort in how close the card vote was: a mere 70.35 per cent of delegates voted for the motion. For a classic Labour conference motion, though, the prize has to go to the composite on… the NHS? Covid? Fuel shortages? No, silly: Palestine. A motion was passed which ‘condemns the ongoing Nakba in Palestine’, using

Monday

27 Sep 2021

Isabel Hardman

Andy McDonald’s resignation spells trouble for Starmer

Andy McDonald has resigned from Labour’s shadow cabinet after Keir Starmer refused to back raising the Minimum Wage to £15 an hour. In his resignation letter, he writes: ‘Yesterday, your office instructed me to go into a meeting to argue against a National Minimum Wage of £15 an hour and against Statutory Sick Pay at the Living Wage. This is something I could not do.’ More damagingly, he adds: Starmer has set great store by trying to keep the Labour party together. ‘I joined your frontbench team on the basis of the pledges that you made in the leadership campaign to bring about unity within the party and maintainability our

Katy Balls

Does Labour have a message?

-7 min listen

With images of long queues at the petrol station dominating social media this weekend, not due to lack of petrol but lack of drivers, the Labour party conference continues in Brighton. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves made more of an impact with her speech than some others, but Labour’s real problem at this conference seems to be finding a distinct message to rally the party loyal. Katy Balls speaks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman.

Kate Andrews

The flaw in Labour’s economic attacks

Labour avidly disagrees with the Tories’ plan to fill budget gaps by hiking National Insurance. So what would they do differently? This was one of the many tasks Rachel Reeves had today as the shadow chancellor delivered her speech at Labour party conference. Reeves not only had to set out an alternative tax-and-spend policy but also take aim at the financial decisions made by Boris Johnson’s government. Did Reeves succeed? No doubt her job was made much easier over the weekend as an energy crisis, which the government should have seen coming, continued to splash across the front pages, exacerbated by fuel shortages at the pumps brought on by a lack of

Steerpike

Labour’s mask hypocrisy

It’s day three of Labour conference and proceedings are in full swing. Whether it’s one of Andy Burnham’s 11 fringe events or yet another interminable motion in the conference hall, the rooms of Brighton have been packed to the rafters with Labour’s long-suffering members. Clearly Covid spreads in teaching settings but has the grace to stop at the doors of conference jollies Yet walking around various venues Mr S was surprised to see just how few attendees were wearing their masks in poorly ventilated rooms, with no windows or open doors. With Covid cases still low, normally such a state of affairs would pass without comment. But Labour has made

Joanna Rossiter

Sabina Nessa and the truth about stranger danger

The brutal murder of primary school teacher Sabina Nessa in Kidbrooke, South London this month has prompted more anger about female safety on British streets. It’s reminiscent of the aftermath of the horrible case of Sarah Everard, another instance of a killer targeting a female victim – seemingly out of the blue – in a public space assumed to be safe. Such incidents understandably heighten fears among women of predatory attacks by men, and lead to calls for greater protection – more police patrols or rape alarms, for instance. Campaigners have praised men for crossing over to the other side of the road rather than walking behind women in order

Katy Balls

What is Andy Burnham up to?

Who is the busiest politician at Labour conference? One could be forgiven for assuming it would be Keir Starmer. But Andy Burnham is giving the Labour leader a run for his money. The mayor for Greater Manchester is down to speak at 11 fringe events in total – after missing out on a slot on the main stage. On Sunday, he kicked off his busy conference schedule with a BBC interview in which he said it was the wrong time for Starmer to try to change party rules. Burnham urged the Labour leadership to finally set out a compelling vision to the public. Burnham hasn’t denied still harbouring leadership ambitions This morning,

James Forsyth

The German elections are good news for Macron

The German election result means that a three party coalition will almost certainly be needed to form a government. Olaf Scholz, the SPD leader, has made clear just now that he is going to try and form a coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats. Whoever succeeds her will take time to build up the authority that Merkel had in these meetings Scholz has a strong claim on the chancellery. The SPD came first in the election and polls consistently showed that he was Germans’ preferred choice for candidate. Despite being from a different party, Scholz successfully positioned himself as the Merkel continuity candidate. The results might suggest a

Isabel Hardman

What does Starmer’s Labour actually stand for?

What does the Labour party stand for? That’s the big question that Keir Starmer needs to answer this week, and so far it’s proving rather more difficult to answer than you might imagine. Its frontbenchers are mostly working on policies that won’t be announced this week, so they are resorting to talking about the party’s heritage and listing the increasing number of elections the party has lost. A line that I’ve heard from a number of shadow ministers on the fringe over the past few days is ‘we need to learn from the losses of 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019’. I’ve heard rather fewer assertions about winning the next election,

Steerpike

Seumas Milne makes his comeback

Much like Brighton’s weather, Labour’s conference started brightly but has now become a much more gloomy affair. As ‘scumgate’ rumbles on, cranks scrap in public while frontbenchers take subtle pot shots at one another. Still, despite all the bleakness and infighting, Mr S is delighted to bring news of one ray of light amid the darkness – the return of Seumas Milne. Jeremy Corbyn’s former director of communications was spied by Steerpike’s man in the Grand, holding court in the bar of the Brighton conference hotel yesterday afternoon, sporting a fresh trim and his trademark black suit. Among those hosted by the former Corbyn spin doctor was union baron Len McCluskey, the recently

Steerpike

Fact check: how popular is Insulate Britain?

Long-suffering commuters have had further misery this month, thanks to the shenanigans of eco-warriors Insulate Britain. The group are an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion and have today blocked the M25 for a sixth time – despite a High Court injunction warning that they face jail if they carried on disrupting traffic on the UK’s busiest motorway. Members of the group argue that the ends justify the means – that their disruptive methods help to bring attention to their cause. But is that the case? Polling by Redfield and Wilton for The Spectator, conducted on Wednesday 22 September, shows that when asked how much they had read or heard about the sit-in protests

Debbie Hayton

No, Keir, trans women like me do not have cervixes

Andrew Marr’s question was simple and straightforward, ‘[Is] someone who thinks that only women have a cervix welcome in the Labour party?’ As a party member who still clings to science and reason, I willed Keir Starmer to give a simple and straightforward answer. Instead, he blustered: Well, Andrew, we need to have a mature, respectful debate about trans rights and we need to, I think, bear in mind that the trans community are amongst the most marginalised and abused communities. It’s not true, Keir. Some of us in the trans community are doing rather well for ourselves, certainly in the UK. We have robust legal protections — we even

Steerpike

Inside Dawn Butler’s Jamaica party

Sunday at Labour conference was a trying affair. Beset by questions about whether Tory voters were ‘scum’ or not, many leading left-wing politicians sought out the fleshpots of Brighton to drown their sorrows. And where better to do that then at Dawn Butler’s legendary Jamaica night, held this year in the gratifyingly sticky confines of Brighton’s much-loved Pryzm nightclub? Just like party infighting and Piers Corbyn, Butler’s Kingston knees-up has become a mainstay of recent conference shindigs. Activists, MPs, hacks and various hangers-ons all endured the half-an-hour wait to enter the bowels of Pryzm, accompanied by the rhythmic beats of a steelpan band. For £5 a head attendees were treated to

Steven Fielding

How safety first Starmer can beat Boris

Even before the embargo was lifted on Keir Starmer’s much-trailed and super-long Fabian pamphlet, The Road Ahead, commentators and critics were already putting the boot in. By writing his 12,000 words or so, all the Labour leader had seemingly achieved was the creation of a consensus, one stretching from the Spectator to the Guardian, that all he had painfully gestated was a cliché-ridden disaster, groaning with platitudes stolen from focus groups. The best thing that was said about it was that the pamphlet was so long and so turgid, hardly anybody would read it. How many ideas a party leader requires to be effective, and from where they should come,

Sunday

26 Sep 2021

Isabel Hardman

Starmer secures a narrow victory against the left

Keir Starmer this evening managed to scrape through his reforms to how Labour elects its leader. The victory follows a very passionate debate at the party’s conference over the policy, which will raise the qualifying threshold of support from MPs in leadership elections from 10 per cent to 20 per cent. It also drops registered supporters, who could join by paying just £3, from being able to vote in leadership elections and introduces a cut-off date for membership when a contest begins. The idea is that when there is a new leadership contest after Starmer, Labour won’t end up electing a fringe candidate. In other words, it is designed to stop

Steerpike

Labour frontbenchers claim they want ‘nice Tories’

Angela Rayner may not be a fan of Tory ‘scum’ – but it seems the deputy Labour leader doesn’t speak for all her party. Tonight at the Labour to Win rally, frontbench colleagues of the ambitious Rayner amounted a desperate rearguard offence to assure floating voters that they weren’t all that hostile to awful Conservative voters. First up was Peter Kyle, the shadow minister for schools. Mr S wondered whether his podium – in front of a crumbling southern pier – was the best spot to make the case for Labour winning Tory heartlands but the cheering rump of Blairite survivors seemed to miss the irony. In a very public

Katja Hoyer

German voters set for a tense night

The German elections have turned out to be an unexpected nail-biter. Since the exit polls were released earlier this evening the result has been too close to call. Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU and their coalition partners, the SPD, are both predicted to have received 25 per cent of the vote each, which means it will remain unclear throughout the evening who has won as the votes continue to be counted. Despite the close result, the mood in the Christian Democratic camp is subdued. Angela Merkel’s would-be successor Armin Laschet has received the worst result his party has achieved in its history. The exit polls showed that 1.4 million of their voters

Katy Balls

Starmer distances himself from Rayner

10 min listen

Angela Rayner said the government were ‘homophobic, racist, misogynistic… scum’ at a Labour party conference event this weekend. Responding to the remarks on the Andrew Marr Show, Keir Starmer said he and Angela ‘take different approaches’, and that it is ‘not language that I would use’. How serious is the fracture in Labour’s leadership? Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and the New Statesman‘s Stephen Bush.

Steerpike

Watch: Corbyn event descends into chaos

It’s a hard time for Labour cranks. With Keir Starmer (belatedly) trying to rid his party of his more eccentric elements, many have found themselves barred from the movement they joined under Jeremy Corbyn. A number of them today pitched up today at The World Transformed (TWT) in Brighton – a rival socialist shindig just a stone’s throw away from the official Labour conference at The Hilton and The Grand on the seafront. TWT began in 2016 at the height of the Corbyn craze and now continues as a kind of gathering in exile of the Corbynista faithful. A panel event on climate change this afternoon was scheduled to boast a full

Isabel Hardman

Keir Starmer’s brains trust

Who are Keir Starmer’s big thinkers? Every political leader has them: folk who provoke them and offer a type of politics and policy that they can pick and choose from. Ed Miliband had ‘salons’ with key thinkers who he respected, David Cameron had Steve Hilton, and Tony Blair had a whole suite of colleagues working on his project in opposition. Starmer hasn’t been in politics for very long, which is one of the reasons he felt the need to write such a long essay setting out what he thinks: he doesn’t have the back catalogue of speeches and pamphlets that many other senior politicians do. He’s not really a ‘salon’