Starmer

The verdict of the Twitter jury is in, articulated in a single, now viral tweet by broadcaster Matthew Stadlen:  ‘Keir Starmer would have been – and would be – a far better Prime Minister than Boris Johnson during this pandemic.’ It is a theme that Starmer has naturally been keen to develop, leading him to make excoriating criticisms of Boris Johnson in a press conference at the weekend. The Starmer thesis is that Johnson is so anxious to be liked that he ducks out of taking tough decisions until it is too late. The Labour leader cites examples that include the lateness of the original lockdown, an allegedly late-in-the-day decision

Plenty of Labour figures who voted Remain are now urging the government to complete a trade agreement with the European Union before the end of the transition period. ‘There isn’t a choice between a fantasy deal and no deal,’ says Liam Byrne. ‘It’s this deal versus no deal, and we will not have a manufacturing industry left unless there is a deal.’ Although there is still a battle within the shadow cabinet on what to do should a UK-EU trade agreement come to parliament, the consensus seems to be that Keir Starmer would whip the party to vote for Johnson’s deal. This marks a big shift in Labour’s Brexit strategy

Sir Keir Starmer will start setting out his vision for the Labour party in the new year, Coffee House understands. The Labour leader will ‘move onto another level’, according to party sources, talking about what life under a Starmer government might look like, and encouraging his frontbenchers to make policy announcements. Up to this point, Starmer has had a strangely slow start as leader because he has been largely in reactive mode, responding to the government’s own response to the pandemic. This has made it easier for him to avoid awkward confrontations in his party over policy, with the stand-off over anti-Semitism being the only real ruction. He has focused largely