Labour

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

How does Labour plan to win back the Red Wall? A leaked internal Labour strategy document gives one answer: it says the party must make ‘use of the flag’. This sounds like a sensible way to woo those voters put off by Jeremy Corbyn. But the deranged backlash from some Labour activists suggests that not everyone agrees. It also shows why the party is doomed to fail in its bit to change its image for the better. Labour activists took to social media yesterday to decry Keir Starmer on the strategy, asking why the Labour leader is risking alienating so many of his party’s core support. That just mentioning the Union flag in a positive

If Keir Starmer has a strategy, it’s this: to paint his party as more competent than the Tories while keeping his head down on almost everything else. The aim of this is to ensure Labour can crawl across the line come the next election, winning a majority with a bit of help from the SNP. There’s a big problem with this approach though: it’s the same one that failed to work for Ed Miliband. To beat it, Boris Johnson need do little more than recycle the Tories’ 2015 campaign, which depicted Miliband in Salmond’s pocket, substituting Sturgeon in his place. The other problem with the ‘do as little as possible’ strategy is that it will almost certainly result

Boris Johnson had a very difficult backdrop to today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, having marked 100,000 deaths in the coronavirus pandemic last night. But, strangely, he didn’t have a particularly difficult session in the Commons. Sir Keir Starmer did, as you might expect, lead on the death toll, asking the Prime Minister repeatedly why he thought the UK had such a high death rate, and why he wouldn’t learn the lessons from the pandemic now so that the government didn’t repeat its mistakes. Johnson was able to deal with this reasonably easily, arguing that while he did think there would be a time to learn the lessons of what happened, that

Labour had an urgent question about schools reopening in the Commons this afternoon, but once again it wasn’t the Opposition that really increased pressure on the government but Conservative backbenchers. They are getting increasingly agitated by the prospect of classrooms remaining empty for many weeks longer than ministers had originally suggested, and were keen to convey their concerns to schools minister Nick Gibb. Gibb had to field questions about rising mental health problems among young people who’ve spent the best part of a year trying to learn at home, about parents struggling to work and home-school their children, and about the criteria for reopening. Almost every question from Conservative MPs

Exactly 40 years ago tomorrow, four Labour party grandees issued the Limehouse Declaration, signalling ‘the re-emergence of social democracy in Great Britain’. The declaration, made on a windswept bridge near the east London home of Dr David Owen, marked the formation of a Council for Social Democracy, that soon became a fully-fledged political party, the SDP. The ‘gang of four’ very nearly succeeded in breaking the mould of British politics, as their moderation hit the spot with millions of voters who opposed Thatcherism but also recoiled from Labour’s radical socialist agenda of the time. But they were thwarted, first by Britain’s first past the post electoral system that made gaining

Why has Labour chosen today to call for Gavin Williamson to resign as Education Secretary? This morning, shadow education secretary Kate Green released a statement saying ‘it is time for Gavin Williamson to go’, arguing that his ‘record throughout this pandemic has been shambolic’ and ‘he has bounced from one crisis to another without learning from his mistakes or listening to the parents, pupils and hard-working education staff who have been left to deal with the fallout’. It is unlikely that he will stay in the job when Boris Johnson carries out his next reshuffle It’s true that Williamson has had probably the worst pandemic out of any minister and

This weekend former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn launched his ‘Project for Peace and Justice’. Ostensibly, the organisation has been set up to campaign for a ‘fairer society’ via worldwide progressive networks. It does sometimes seem though as if the group’s real purpose is to act as a branding exercise for Jeremy Corbyn himself, with the message ‘Founded by Jeremy Corbyn’ plastered all over the organisation’s website. Rather giving the game away, the Twitter handle of the group is the ‘@Corbyn_Project’. The speakers at this weekend’s online launch did not exactly dispel the notion that this was all about Corbyn either. Mr S was particularly struck by a speech by the Labour MP

Keir Starmer’s keynote speech at the Fabian conference today was focused almost completely on foreign policy. The thrust of the Labour pitch was that Starmer is ‘pro-American but anti-Trump’. Given Corbyn’s tendency to see the United States at the Great Satan, this marks a huge shift in Labour’s foreign policy outlook. However, the speech was also classic Starmer and not in a good way: correcting the most obvious mistakes from the Corbyn era but going absolutely no further. I should take a moment to applaud Starmer for at least pivoting Labour back to a foreign policy position that is sensible and won’t stand in the way of the party trying

Seventh time lucky? Richard Leonard, who has resigned this afternoon, was the sixth Scottish Labour leader since the SNP elbowed the party out of power in 2007. His tenure was the second-longest since devolution began, mostly because Labour is in such bad nick north of the border that no one else wants the job. The Yorkshire-born Scot secured the leadership in 2017 in part by allowing the impression to get about that he was a Corbynista. In truth, he hails from the harder edge of the soft-left and in his three years at the helm of Scottish Labour he did not shift the party significantly to the left. He leaves

What’s the Labour party’s biggest weakness at the ballot box? After the last election, Brexit and Corbyn were credited by Tory MPs with helping them win the biggest Conservative majority since Margaret Thatcher. But now the UK is out of the EU and Keir Starmer in charge, there’s an argument that it’s now the economy that is their biggest weakness.  A YouGov poll over the summer found that while Starmer’s personal approval ratings are promising, only 19 per cent of voters believe that Labour to be best at handling the economy, compared with 37 per cent who say the Tories are. Given that six in ten voters view the economy as their

Inevitably, Keir Starmer’s main intervention today has been on Covid, with the Labour leader calling for more restrictions within the next 24 hours. But he made this demand as part of his first major policy speech as leader – and there was more in it than just Covid curbs. Starmer has decided he wants to spend the next few months talking about several topics the Labour party has veered away from over the past decade or so. Chief among them is the economy, with the leader and shadow chancellor keen to use the time they have now before the next election to start making it normal for Labour to bring

Every party keeps on file a list of rash things politicians in other parties have said that can be used against them at a later date. Way back when I was directing Ukip’s 2014 European parliamentary campaign, I built up a ‘helpful contributions’ folder containing print-outs of gaffes and embarrassing admissions made by pro-EU MPs and MEPs. Conservative Campaign Headquarters probably has at its disposal a far more sophisticated and comprehensive digital system for logging the own-goals of its adversaries. But one thing is certain, someone will imminently be inputting an entry marked something like ‘Duffield, R. – Labour’s plan to re-join the EU’. Because Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP

There is a thought in some Westminster circles that Keir Starmer has lost the next general election already. Whether it be because of Brexit or Brexit and a bunch of other stuff, including leftover Corbyn baggage, Starmer is doomed as he stands. I believe this view is naïve and the smarter Tories I know don’t buy it for a second. Labour could still win the next election, particularly if the Conservatives get complacent. Yet if they do end up losing their fifth general election in a row, I already know why that will be. There was a moment in the 2015 Labour leadership contest that stands out for me, as

It shouldn’t have been a difficult task to hold the government to account today on schools and lockdown, as the Prime Minister currently weighs up shuttering the school gates till Covid cases decline. Labour leader Keir Starmer though seems to have managed to develop an even more confused policy today. This morning, Labour suggested that schools should remain open even if the country went into lockdown. This was followed by a hasty U-Turn this afternoon, with the party then calling for schools to be closed. After such a big change, Mr S had presumed that Labour would at least have a basic grasp of their new policy. Unfortunately though, in

On New Year’s Eve at 11 p.m., the United Kingdom departed both the single market and the customs union, making the end to the country’s former membership of the EU complete. It was a moment to celebrate for Brexiteers; the commemoration of sadness for some Remainers. Or should I say ‘Rejoiners’ — there is no remaining now, Great Britain having departed the European Union. Many Rejoiners have set out their stalls already. ‘When they tell you to “move on” DO move on — to the long, strong, campaign to rejoin,’ tweeted Simon Schama, the historian and noted fan of the UK’s membership of the EU, ‘However hard the road, however