Labour

Keir Starmer has caught a lot of flak this week for his response to the Budget. The complaints are that he wasn’t strong enough, his opposition to corporation tax rises was a mistake and that he had nothing to really say that managed to stick with the public. It has added to a sense of Starmer’s leadership of the Labour party being on a downward spiral. Yet Starmer has probably done as well in his opening year as Labour leader as anyone could have. He isn’t the problem – it’s his party. The reality is that Labour couldn’t win the next election with anyone in charge. The problem goes well beyond

Since Rishi Sunak became Chancellor, he has been more focussed on spending money than raising it. Sunak has borrowed more in his first year in his job that Gordon Brown did in his whole time as chancellor. While today’s Budget saw Sunak extend several relief schemes, he also used it to take a few tentative steps to showing how he plans to put the economy on a solid footing following the pandemic.  Stressing that fairness and honesty would define his approach, Sunak did what many in his party had warned against and raised taxes. Here are five things we learnt from Sunak’s Budget: 1. Corporation tax will increase to 25 per cent

Now that we’ve finally heard Boris Johnson’s ‘roadmap’ out of lockdown, a key question remains: when will we see a return to politics as normal? It might not be the most pressing concern for most people, but for Keir Starmer and his supporters, it matters. Only when this happens can Labour start making some serious assaults on the Tories stubborn poll-lead. As a Labour member of ten or so years I want Starmer to have a chance to shine. After all, it is not like my party has been blessed with great leaders in recent years. Much of my time on the doorstep during the 2010 and 2015 general elections involved shying away

Boris Johnson’s political recovery in the last couple of months has been nothing short of remarkable. Not that he was ever down and out, of course, but having got a Brexit deal that both Farage and Starmer backed, followed by the success of the vaccine rollout, the Prime Minister once again looks unassailable.  As for the Labour leader, things look much less rosy. But what hasn’t been said in the criticism of Starmer is that what has mostly caused the leader of the opposition’s dip is not his own incompetence but the Prime Minister’s recent good form. This has made me realise something about Boris: he bears a lot of comparison with one former prime

The right is usually much better than the left at harnessing the awesome power of the folk memories that surround Britain’s heroic second world war struggle. The idea of British exceptionalism at its most evocative moment between 1939 and 1945 was crucial to Brexit and crucial to securing popular backing for the Falklands War a generation earlier too. So for Keir Starmer to base his economic pitch for power not on modern monetary theory or any other piece of leftish guru-jargon, but instead on drawing parallels with the reforming post-war Labour administration of Clement Attlee is smart politics. The Attlee government has a powerful mythology of its own that adds

It’s been a difficult few weeks for Sir Keir Starmer with left-leaning commentators and MPs lining up to criticise the Labour leader. Among recent complaints include the idea that Starmer plays it too safe, has not held the Tories to account despite the high Covid death toll and has failed to make much of an impression on the general public. The polls also point to problems – with Savanta ComRes finding Boris Johnson has had a 5 point rise on the question of best Prime Minister in its monthly political tracker. Today Starmer attempted to turn the page by setting out his approach on the economy. As Kate reports on Coffee House, this included the establishment of ‘British

The Labour party has updated the old metaphysical question: ‘If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?’ It ought to be protesting on behalf of all who are suffering because of Brexit. It ought to be throwing the government’s broken promises back at it and ramming home the message that voters cannot trust Boris Johnson. And yet, listen as hard you like, you cannot hear a sound. If no one can hear Labour opposing, is it really an opposition? The Brexit debacle is drowning once viable business sectors in bureaucracy and threatening what peace and prosperity Northern Ireland

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Five years ago, Tony Benn’s former bag carrier was staging the most extraordinary Labour coup, ushering in the disastrous Bennite restoration that was Jeremy Corbyn’s rule.  Then he went on to found Momentum — Labour’s party within a party, the vanguard of the proletariat that would keep Labour’s wayward liberal MPs on the narrow path of socialism. That path so nearly reached its conclusion at the 2017 general election when Corbyn came within a few thousand votes of No. 10. Since then, catastrophe. Labour obliterated, the leadership lost to a competent social democrat.  And yet the true path of socialism continues, meandering as it does

The most extreme measure in the entire Labour Party manifesto of 2019 – and this is a high bar – was a pledge that Keir Starmer ought to have disavowed explicitly on day one of becoming leader. It committed a future Labour government to ‘conduct an audit of the impact of Britain’s colonial legacy to understand our contribution to the dynamics of violence and insecurity across regions previously under British colonial rule.’ This planned wallowing in national self-abasement was, to my mind, clearly conceived as a precursor to a demand for the payment of reparations by Britain for the excesses of empire. That such an unpatriotic measure made it into

Being at the launch of the 1997 Labour manifesto and watching the shadow cabinet take to the stage is one of my abiding memories from more than 20 years spent as a lobby journalist. Even setting aside the star-turn Tony Blair, it was a veritable march of the big beasts — Gordon Brown, Robin Cook, Jack Straw, David Blunkett, John Prescott, Mo Mowlam. All of these people were major players with large followings and massive public profiles. The less central figures also passed muster, including George Robertson (later a fine Nato secretary general), the ever-popular Donald Dewar, the clever and well-spoken Alistair Darling, suave Jack Cunningham, Margaret Beckett and Ann

A leaked email from Keir Starmer’s director of policy that hit the headlines this week contained an interesting line: that Labour must become ‘unashamedly pro-business’ in order to ‘be the party of working people and their communities’. This has caused predictable outrage on the left of the party. At the other end of the political spectrum, the Tories have been quick to mock the whole idea. At this week’s PMQs, Boris reminded Starmer that at the last election Labour wanted to dismantle capitalism – now it wants to be the party of business? Really? But the Tories need to be careful about how hard they laugh at this one. While

Should the Labour party be worried about the Greens? Some Labour activists think so. The Greens have just become the third most popular in British politics, if the latest IpsosMORI poll is anything to go on. The party won eight per cent support in the survey, putting them ahead of the Lib Dems. It’s enough to give even the staunchest Starmerite cause for concern. But the reality is that Labour needn’t sound the alarm. In fact, the very last thing Labour should be worried about at the moment is losing potential voters to the Greens. Why? Because we’ve been here before. In early 2015, support for the Greens went as high as 11 per cent

Since Harold Wilson stood down as Prime Minister 45 years ago, there have been 11 general elections contested by seven different Labour leaders. Of those, only Tony Blair has managed to win, which he did three times in a row. The roll call of the defeated reads Callaghan, Foot, Kinnock (twice), Brown, Miliband and Corbyn (twice). As Alastair Campbell noted in a recent column for the New European, Labour’s record over the time span is lost, lost, lost, lost, Blair, Blair, Blair, lost, lost, lost, lost. Yet still we political commentators invite you to suspend your disbelief and suppose Labour is in the running. And still it is the Labour

Only a few months ago, Keir Starmer was hailed as a prime minister in waiting who was giving Boris Johnson serious jitters. Now the shine appears to be coming off Labour’s leader.  Starmer’s ‘forensic’ approach can only get him so far. And there are serious questions about whether he has what it takes to get the Labour party back to winning ways. The postponement of last year’s elections hasn’t helped, as it meant Starmer missed a chance to show what his party could achieve without Corbyn at the top; everything about how a Labour party with Starmer at the helm might fare with the electorate remains theoretical. For his critics, the worry is that