Starmer

The government’s green credentials are in the firing line – and not for the first time. In office, Keir Starmer has sparked headlines with seemingly endless plane trips abroad. And now Mr S has done some digging to find out what ministerial cars are being used to ferry our leaders around. A Freedom of Information request on the Government Car Service reveals that the Department for Transport invoiced more than £1.3 million to government departments making use of ministerial motors over Labour’s first three months in power. But Mr S is a little sceptical about Whitehall’s commitment to its electric vehicle ‘revolution’ – not least because the bulk of its

Keir Starmer still clearly misses opposition. He spent almost as much of his reset speech complaining about the Tories and the mess he feels they made of things as he did talking about what he is actually doing. It’s almost as though government has turned out to be harder and less enjoyable than even he had predicted. He spent the first few minutes of his speech listing in his usual exasperated tones the ways in which the Conservatives had failed the country, deploying his analogy about tackling damp in a household by using a hairdryer, before saying: ‘Stabilising the economy, fixing the foundations, clearing up the mess – so we

When Rishi Sunak announced a July election during a torrential downpour, one leftist wag played ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ at high volume in adjacent Whitehall. The audible strains of the D-Ream hit – which served as Tony Blair’s election anthem – added to the impression of a drowning PM and conveyed the notion that a heavy Tory defeat was inevitable. And so it proved. Yet the parallels with 1997 are already done and dusted. Because while Blair had a political honeymoon which lasted all the way to the subsequent election, Keir Starmer’s ended almost as soon as it began. It is today reported that Starmer will acknowledge this in

Keir Starmer began his big conference interview with the BBC talking about the story that has dominated the weekend – the Hamas attack on Israel. With Israel’s Ministry of Health suggesting at least 300 Israelis have been killed so far and the death toll of Palestinians rising, the Labour leader described the rocket fire and incursions from Gaza as an ‘appalling terrorist attack’ and said Israel had ‘every right to defend herself’. It will be a test for the new-look Labour party as to whether all MPs stay on message in the comings days in Liverpool. The party has long been divided on the Israel Palestine conflict and Starmer could

Today Kwasi Kwarteng attempted to calm concerns in his party over the fallout from the not-so-mini Budget – telling MPs: ‘We are one team and need to remain focused’.  That message is likely to face some resistance after the latest polling. Tonight the Times has published a new YouGov poll which gives Labour a 33-point lead. Yes, you read that right. It is thought to be the largest poll lead enjoyed by a political party since the late 1990s. It comes after a poll earlier this week gave Labour a 17-point lead. According to the survey, just 37 per cent of 2019 Conservative voters would stick with the party were an election

Is nationalisation the vote-winner which Keir Starmer believes it to be? We will find out in due course, but my hunch is that the British public as a whole care a lot less about who owns the train carriages they ride in and the power stations which generate their electricity than Labour MPs do.  No one who remembers British Rail will be under any illusions that public ownership is a panacea What they care about rather more, surely, is whether their trains arrive on time and whether their lights stay on. No one who remembers British Rail will be under any illusions that public ownership is a panacea for a

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

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