Keir starmer

Keir Starmer tonight told the weekly parliamentary Labour party meeting that ‘we will never underestimate Liz Truss’. The Labour leader added that ‘she is a talented politician who has got to the top through hard work and determination’ and that ‘she will do whatever it takes to keep them in power’. He warned that ‘the polls might tighten and her plans might create some buzz’. It was a reminder to the party, which often struggles to accept female Tory leaders, not to fall into the trap of mocking Truss or feasting too much on the Tory civil war. How will Labour approach the new PM? Starmer will be asking her

With Truss and Sunak tearing chunks out of each other, inflation soaring and a cost-of-living crisis looming, you might have thought Labour would have the next election in the bag. But you can always trust the party to pull defeat from the jaws of victory, as the events of the past day have just shown once again. First, Sir Keir Starmer was found guilty of breaching the MPs’ code of conduct by failing to properly register more than £120,000 in land deals, corporate donations and Premier League tickets. He was forced to apologise to parliamentary ethics watchdog Kathryn Stone after the errors were uncovered. This was despite the Labour leader

Sam Tarry, who joined today’s picket line at Euston and gave various interviews from there, has been sacked from the Labour shadow transport team and the front bench. However, Tarry has not been sacked for being on the picket line, but for making unauthorised media appearances. Labour’s line is that this isn’t about appearing on a picket line. Members of the frontbench sign up to collective responsibility. That includes media appearances being approved and speaking to agreed frontbench positions.  This morning, Tarry implied that rail workers would not have gone on strike under a Labour government as they would have been offered a more generous pay deal. Given that Tarry

The last few months have been a godsend for the Labour party. Ten points ahead in the polls, with the Tories mired in the sleaze, its members now get to watch Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss slug it out all summer. Not for nothing then has Sir Keir Starmer sought to grasp the mantle of change and portray his party as the sensible, sober party of government, which will restore integrity to British politics. But is that really fair? Just this morning on Radio 4’s Today programme, Starmer was asked by Nick Robinson about the ‘ten pledges’ on which he ran to be Labour leader in April 2020. Robinson accused

Is that it? After two years of studiously ignoring the issue, Sir Keir Starmer finally delivered his big Brexit speech yesterday to, er, a somewhat underwhelmed audience. Facing accusations of being part of the Remainiac elite, Starmer’s team naturally decided the best course of action was to brief his speech to the Financial Times (backed Remain), deliver it under the auspices of the Centre for European Reform (staunchly pro-EU) and hold it at the Irish Embassy (of course). The speech itself largely centred on five fairly uncontroversial ideas like a new veterinary deal and making it easier for UK musicians to tour around Europe. There was standard soap about the

Yesterday’s Times carried a report that will only add to Sir Keir Starmer’s troubles. It quoted several members of the shadow ministerial team suggesting that Starmer is dull and unimpressive.That will only sharpen the perception, held by quite a few Westminster people, that the Labour leader isn’t doing as well as he should be, given the government’s weaknesses and failings. ‘Keir Starmer is not dragging his party down but he’s not transforming its fortunes either’. That was the conclusion of a New Statesman analysis a few weeks ago, and probably a fair one. The problem for Starmer is the fact that Labour needs that transformation. One of the most overlooked

Silence. That is what we heard during Gloria de Piero’s recent focus group which she held for her GB News show in her old constituency of Ashfield, one of many Red Wall seats that fell to the Conservatives in 2019. Most participants had been Labour voters up to that election but felt the party had somehow let them down and ceased to represent the working class, especially with Jeremy Corbyn as leader. De Piero found them most talkative about how Boris Johnson had once appeared to be a different kind of politician, one whose promises they had believed but who they now felt had let them down, thanks to partygate.

It seems that Labour’s bid to recapture Wakefield isn’t off to the best of starts. The resignation of Tory MP Imran Ahmad-Khan last month over historic sex offences gave Sir Keir Starmer’s party a chance to take back the seat it lost in 2019 and prove that Labour is on track to make gains in the Red Wall at the next election.  Unfortunately, a row has now broken out over attempts to ‘parachute’ favoured candidates into the constituency. The entire executive of the local Wakefield branch has this week resigned after party HQ shortlisted two members in its process to pick Labour’s candidate in the forthcoming by-election. Quite something, given that Sir Keir ran on

Boris Johnson is running out of time to produce things the Tories can show the voters at the next election. The theme of his Queen’s Speech – if there was one – was an attempt to fix that. That next election campaign was countered by Keir Starmer in the chamber this afternoon. The main focus was on the cost-of-living crisis and how much worse things are going to get. Funnily enough, Starmer didn’t mention the members of the government who’d broken Covid rules The Labour leader repeatedly accused this government of not being ‘up to the challenge’, with the Tories producing only a ‘thin address bereft of ideas or purpose, without a guiding

Keir Starmer had no option but to say – as he has done – that he will resign if fined for breaching Covid rules, as I already pointed out on Friday when Durham police announced it was investigating whether his beer and curry last April was work sustenance or an illegal party. There were two reasons why he had to put his job on the line. First, he would never get over the charge of grotesque hypocrisy had he failed to do this, given that he and his party have repeatedly and urgently called on Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak to quit, after they received fixed penalty notices for attending the PM’s birthday

Sir Keir Starmer has sown the wind – and now he reaps the whirlwind. The Labour leader has led the charge on Partygate these past six months, releasing endless statements, clips and quotes castigating Boris Johnson for the gatherings in No. 10 during Covid. But today Durham Police have announced they will investigate an alleged lockdown breach by Sir Keir, who was photographed drinking and eating a curry during the ‘Beergate’ incident of April 2021. Steerpike thought it would be timely to look back at just some of the recent occasions when the Labour leader moralised about ‘Partygate’… 19 January – Amid fresh reports of more new parties, Starmer demands Johnson’s resignation in the House

Schadenfreude is a funny thing. Once it was Labour laughing at Boris Johnson dodging questions about food and drink: now it’s their turn to face them too. Sir Keir Starmer had a somewhat excruciating appearance on this morning’s Today programme when he was asked repeatedly about his attendance at a work event in April 2021, at which the Labour leader was photographed holding a beer. Four times the Labour leader was asked by Martha Kearney about whether Durham Police had been in touch with him about the gathering; four times he dodged the question. Starmer claimed that the picture was taken before 10 p.m and that thereafter he and other Labour campaigners resumed

Prime Minister’s Questions took a rather bizarre twist this afternoon when the Labour leader ended up demanding Boris Johnson apologise to the Archbishop of Canterbury. The Prime Minister reportedly complained to Tory MPs last night about Justin Welby’s criticism of the government’s Rwanda asylum policy. Sources at the meeting said Johnson had claimed Welby was ‘less vociferous’ about Vladimir Putin than he had about this policy – something the Church of England has already condemned as a ‘disgraceful slur’. Johnson did not apologise, instead saying:  I was slightly taken aback for the government to be criticised over the policy that we have devised to end the deaths at sea in the Channel as