The Labour leader is in trouble. His party has been cast adrift from its moorings in the working-class and is languishing in opposition. He has tried to drag Labour towards electability, but so far, his only reward has been members’ hostility and plots for his removal. If his Conservative counterpart, safe in No. 10, is
Campaigning to become Labour leader last year, Keir Starmer said Harold Wilson was his favourite party leader of the last fifty years because he had unified the party. This was hardly a coincidence as putting an end to ‘factionalism’ was then one of Starmer’s main promises to Labour members. Subsequently Starmer has name checked Wilson
‘We’re trapped between the two worlds,’ said a Labour worker during the last days of the party’s ill-fated Hartlepool by-election campaign. She meant Labour was strapped for cash, lacking the many small donations that came with Jeremy Corbyn and the big donors who backed Tony Blair. Her comment, however, had a wider relevance. In trying
Despite his carefully-crafted bumbling image, Boris Johnson is anything but daft. When vying to replace the apparently rootless Tory moderniser David Cameron as Conservative party leader he knew what to do: write a book praising Winston Churchill. 95 per cent of Conservative members regard the wartime Prime Minster favourably. Johnson lost out to Theresa May
‘It’s the return of Tory sleaze’: so said Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday. His was an assertion immediately echoed by various leading Labour figures across social media. Former prime minister David Cameron’s questionable relationship with Greensill Capital is the immediate occasion for this potentially toxic claim. But Labour clearly hopes to drag
Labour’s recovery under Keir Starmer has, for the moment, stalled. Most surveys suggest voters are less inclined than they once were to see him as ‘prime ministerial’ and his party as ready for government. It is too early to say if this is due to the pandemic looking like it is finally under Conservative ministers’
After a solid 2020 Keir Starmer is now finding life hard. By the end of last year, it appeared he was dragging his party back from its disastrous 2019 election result. But YouGov now has Labour lagging the Conservatives by 13 points. The explanation for this might be simple and temporary: the government’s successful vaccination
Keir Starmer is an extremely methodical politician. Like the mills of God, he might grind slow, but he grinds exceedingly small. Once the Labour leader sets his mind to an objective – such as ridding his party of the taint of anti-Semitism – he is implacable. Just ask the Corbynite wing of the party, who
Since becoming Labour leader, Keir Starmer has single-mindedly been trying to persuade red wall voters that Labour is ‘patriotic’, just like them. He thereby hopes to clear away those cultural barriers that have arisen between Labour in the north and midlands where voting for the party used to be almost instinctive. As he said in his
Keir Starmer has been leader of the Labour party for just eight months. But that hasn’t stopped analysts defining what it is that ‘Starmerism’ represents. To some, it is an empty space where ideas should be: technocratic, electorally-driven but otherwise strategically rudderless. Others – most obviously implacable Corbynites – even detect elements of free-market individualism.
It is nearly a year since one of the Labour party’s worst ever election defeats; and just over six months since Keir Starmer became its leader. Starmer has acknowledged that his party has a mountain to climb if it is to win the next election, but that is his target. Most opinion surveys suggest he
Even before the final result of the US Presidential election was known, the British left was ready with its hot takes. Momentum, which continues to proudly hold aloft the flickering flame of Corbynism, was amongst the first out of the traps, claiming that Joe Biden’s failure to achieve a landslide victory confirmed, ‘what we already
Keir Starmer’s first conference speech as Labour leader took place in exceptional circumstances. Thanks to Covid, there was no party conference in the conventional sense. His speech lacked the usual enthusiastic audience primed to punctuate a leader’s rhetoric with cheers; nor was there a ten-minute-long standing ovation at its conclusion. It was a desperately low-key
Seventy-five years ago this week, Clement Attlee became prime minister of the most radical government in British history. In office, Attlee faced unprecedented problems created by the need to turn a near-bankrupt wartime economy back to the requirements of peace while finding work for millions of demobilised soldiers. Under his leadership and despite these problems the Labour
This is a week of bittersweet anniversaries for the Labour party. It is now 72 years since Clement Attlee’s government created the National Health Service, its most popular achievement. It is also 75 years since Attlee led the party to its first ever landslide victory, a triumph that made the NHS possible. But if these
Ever since Keir Starmer was elected leader in April a phoney peace has prevailed in the Labour party. While it looked inevitable to most outsiders, the ease with which Starmer beat Rebecca Long-Bailey – the continuity Corbynite candidate in all but name – took many on the left by surprise. Their disorientation only increased as
By most measures Keir Starmer has, politically speaking, won the war when it comes to Covid. Since becoming Labour leader in early April he has hardly put a foot wrong, balancing his desire to appear supportive of Boris Johnson’s government during this unique moment of national crisis while retaining the freedom to expose and criticise
It has become a ritual almost as traditional as the Changing of the Guard. During a weekend of mostly peaceful protests, Winston Churchill’s statue in Parliament Square was once again vandalised. The first recorded defacement of Ivor Roberts-Jones’ imposing rendition of Churchill took place during London’s 2000 May Day anti-capitalist protests. A strip of grass
It has been a remarkable week. Boris Johnson’s refusal to sack Dominic Cummings for what the vast majority of Britons consider a flagrant breach of lockdown rules has caused his personal ratings to tumble. According to YouGov his party has seen a 15 per cent lead over Labour collapse to just 6 per cent in
World War Two remains, for a certain kind of Brit, a living and vital presence. The increasingly-distant memory of our Finest Hour still shapes how many regard Britain’s present and future. How else can we even begin to explain Nigel Farage’s appearance to the sound of air raid sirens at one of his Brexit party rallies?
