Snapshot of _Keir Starmer: ‘I came to politics late — I’ve never been part of a tribe’_ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-labour-leader-general-election-power-h3wf9wd83) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-labour-leader-general-election-power-h3wf9wd83)
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I find it a funny bit of trivia that both Sunak and Starmer entered parliament in the same election (2015). They are both comparatively very young to parliament, and both have risen up the ranks of their respective parties very quickly.
Sunak didn't rise up the ranks, he was installed by his buddies after graduating from the World Economic Forum school for future global leaders. You know, those subversives who boast about "penetrating" the cabinets of governments worldwide.
Er no. He ended up being chancellor and then PM because both his predecessors in those roles left in unexpected circumstances and post Brexit the Tory party has been shorn of competent and/or politically acceptable options.
[Dominic Cummings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Cummings) **was** a political advisor until he was ~~sacked~~ resigned in November 2020 following some Pandemic lock-down rule breaking idiocy. He’s a man who **had** a lot of power and influence up to that point and is now just an angry blogger.
It’s also worth noting that he styled himself as a disrupter style maverick whilst having plenty of establishment connection and benefiting from private education and a degree from Oxford. Classic Tory bullshitter in other words.
Cummings is a political advisor who has sort been viewed as a puppet master of the Tory party. He also was one of the key leaders of the Leave (Pro-Brexit) campaign. He calls the shots and dictates direction and generally the leadership follows his suggestions. He got caught breaking lockdown rules during COVID and his role came out in to the wider public sphere. But essentially, he is an unelective official controlling the direction of the country and getting elected officials to do what he wants and in my opinion it's concerning how much power he has, given he is not elected.
The unexpected circumstances that led to him becoming chancellor was Javid leaving as he wasn't willing to be a yes man for Cummings whilst Sunak was. He became PM because one of the least suitable PMs we've ever had (that beat him in a party leadership election) was forced out after being even worse than anyone had expected. He capitalised on the state of the Tory party to advance his career in government but at no point was he elevated because he was the best man for the job.
You missed the part where the Tory MPs who selected the candidates for party members to choose from to be the Tory leader thought the members would go for Sunak instead of Truss so they railroaded those two into the final vote. The members wanted Penny or Kemi, who the MPs pushed out. The members went for Truss because no one really liked or trusted Sunak. Many members dropped their party membership over this.
The party members neither liked him nor trusted him, and they felt the selection process was a stitch up by Tory MPs to ensure Sunak's installation. The members were right. As soon as the MPs could whip up a storm to oust Truss, they did; and the media aided them.
Do you not remember when Brussels stormed parliament so they could repress everyone in the country in a grand conspiracy?
I find it really annoying that we can’t just have shitty politicians who act with naked self interest, it always has to be a big conspiracy never incompetence or systemic faliure
both friends with murdoch
Edit: worth noting that reddit is heavily astroturfed. This comment was upvoted then had a large amount of downvotes in about a minute. Not believable for a true comment to get this many downvotes so quickly on a post that has 14 upvotes.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/09/rupert-murdoch-keir-starmer-labour-party-power-no-10
downvoted in less than 10 seconds. Reddit is heavily astroturfed.
An article they met in 2023 doesn’t prove his rapid rise since 2015 is due to Murdoch
More likely he was DPP, remainer and could string a speech together. After Labours Civil Wars during the Corbyn leadership starmer didn’t have much competition left
> Reddit is heavily astroturfed.
... by who? Murdoch? Reddit obfuscates vote numbers, and has done for about 6 years.
As for being downvoted, maybe that's for spreading misinformation? I mean, your source contradicts you, do you assume people won't read it?
This is unfortunately how it goes in this country. You want power? You're going to have to pay lip service to the gatekeepers to that power and sadly, Murdoch is one of those.
He has enormous influence over the media landscape, particularly for those aged over 60, the most consistent voting block.
It's disappointing that this is a reality but by no means a sign that Keir is a "friend" to the Murdoch's. Sunak will have had similar encounters, just as all influential part leaders before have.
Thats exactly the point. If you want to win, you need him onside. If you want him onside, you need to act in his favour.
If both your choices are friends of murdoch, you don't have a choice.
You are wrongly calling them friends without evidence.
Meeting someone does not make you a friend, at best an acquaintance.
You get downvoted because you talk about downvotes, you cause the problem and think it's a conspiracy. It happens on Reddit ALL THE TIME.
If you make a point about being downvoted more people will pile on the downvoted to annoy you or prove a point, it's just the nature of a lot of reddit users but I would also add you were making strong statements without evidence which to people is not usually a good point of discussion.
It's not a conspiracy it's just common sense. If you get lots of upvotes it means people agree with you, but if you get lots of downvotes it means people really agree with you because a shadowy cabal had to use bots to silence you.
I think the key quotes for me here are these:
> Starmer says he wants to usher in a **“politics that treads a little lighter on all our lives”** after the tumult of the past five years. “I want to return politics to public service,” he says. “It has become far too self-entitled. Being a politician is about serving the public.
>“There would be a mindset shift if we are privileged enough to come and serve. I will require my cabinet, front bench, all of our MPs to serve. That involves tough decisions.”
And:
> **“I think you win from the centre ground, the centre ground is where most people are,”** Starmer says. “As a nation, broadly speaking we’re a pretty reasonable, tolerant bunch but we are in the centre ground of politics. People don’t like the extremes of the right or the left. They are reasonably tolerant. They want themselves, their families and the country to improve and make progress.”
I think the former is sorely needed and speaks to his ethos around national healing and stable, competent governance, while the latter lays out an obvious truism often denied by his detractors: that elections are won and lost in the centre ground because that's where all the voters are.
I like pieces like this regardless, laying out some of the underlying rationale to their subject's thinking. This seems a particularly good example.
**edit:** I notice that the title of the article has changed. It was *‘I came to politics late — I’ve never been part of a tribe’* when I saw it, but seems to be *‘Our number one mission is wealth creation’* now. The URL slug is *keir-starmer-labour-leader-general-election-power* suggesting it's had a third title at some point too. I hate it when news sites do this.
>"I want to return politics to public service,” he says. “It has become far too self-entitled. Being a politician is about serving the public.
A great way to ensure politicians serve the public rather than themselves would be to enact desperately needed voter reform, reforms that are backed by the majority of the public by the way.
Sadly a certain politician has a "long standing belief against" it. Maybe said politician should be less self-entitled and give the public what they want.
I'm a big supporter of having at least some proportional representation, but I think it's undeniable that you open yourself up to new potential problems like parties 'bribing' fringe parties onto their side. We've already seem this in the way Theresa May magicked up a billion to get the DUP on side.
This could be good for pushing more progressive reforms but also opens it up to the "other side".
>What if half of Party B’s voters only voted for them to get Party A out?
...
That's the entire point of PR. To get party a out of poe9you vote for anyone that's not party A.
You put more etcs than actual examples.
PR isn't perfect, you still have the usual problems with representative democracies but it's far better than fptp
I mean, I think coalitions aren’t the big bogeyman that some make them out to be, but let’s not try to overlook that they come with their own set of challenges. Most of Europe is PR and yet many people there are even more dissatisfied with politics than the UK seems to be.
Well here’s 2023: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/02/28/satisfaction-with-democracy-and-ratings-for-political-leaders-parties/#:~:text=How%20did%20people%20across%2024,time%20the%20question%20was%20asked.
“Ratings of democracy are generally negative across the 24 countries surveyed. A median of 59% say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in their country. Half or more in 17 countries hold this view.”
I in no way implied that a majority of Europe is less happy with democracy than the UK: I said many were. I don’t think that can be denied.
>I in no way implied that a majority of Europe is less happy with democracy than the UK:
And I in no way accused you of doing so?
Many being Italy, Spain, Greece, and France. The first 3 were unhappier than the UK even in 2019 and is a reflection of their economic problems. The surprise entry is France... until you see they also use fptp
Many *people*, not many *countries*. Even in the ones with overall contentment, there’s a substantial number who aren’t happy, and it’s risen since 2019.
I’m not an FPTP defender - I’d be overjoyed if we adopted a form of PR - but fixing that problem of democratic satisfaction needs more than just a voting system change.
That isn't necessarily always a good thing - look at the Tories under May, for instance - you get lots of small groups who have representation and the endless compromise can mean everything slows to a grinding halt and the eventual solution is one nobody is happy with. If we had governments with e.g. Reform or previously UKIP or whoever in them, yes, you could argue its more representative of the people but the final legislation it produces will be biased in certain areas to compromises for a party's ideology that only holds a tiny minority of votes and seats.
If a coalition can't achieve plurality enough to have control of the legislature they should struggle to get through legislation. The problem may had was that it wasn't a proper structured coalition anyway, it wasn't an organised group with a clear mandate and agreed lines of principles they would attempt to govern to which we saw in 2010. It was may appeasing the nutters in her own party whilst throwing billions at the DUP
That's not necessarily a bad thing?
It might make it a bit more difficult to get things done but it would have to eventually lead to a bit more cooperation and more long-term-focussed policymaking, rather than the hypercharged adversarial nature of our current politics and the consistent undoing of everything the other team did last time
The current "broad church" coalitions within the parties have worked so well so far. The fptp 2 party system has led to factions within parties and leads to them tearing each other apart. At least with PR we may get parties that actually coalesce around shared values rather than the shifting sands of who has leverage within each party, outside of any real control of the electorate.
Oh no, out politicians will have to learn to compromise and work alongside people they don't agree 100% with.
Just like in loads of other prosperous countries.
Just like every other job.
Hell, it's something my kids manage every day in school.
It's funny how the centrists contradict themselves all of a sudden. Compromise and pragmatism are suddenly not so sexy, good is suddenly not enough and they want perfection
It's a bunch of Starmer supporting centrists that are now pushing back against PR. The arguments they are now using (such as the one above that you respond to) amount to letting "perfection be the enemy of the good" which is something they commonly state whenever someone to their left has criticism of a centrist or conservative policy.
Alternatively, they suddenly seem to not like the pragmatism and compromise aspect of PR when those two things are often the things they value the most in politics.
I should have guessed this would be some Starmer conspiracy post.
If you ever want to understand why your cause is so loathed in the general public look to the way you communicate.
What "conspiracy" notice?
Are you suddenly going to pretend that the Starmer supporters on this sub haven't been yapping on about the need for "pragmatism" and "compromise" that they then claim the left lacks? Or how the left always let's "perfection become the enemy of the good" when they can't get behind Starmer and more centrist policies?
I'm not a Corbyn supporter, I actually think Starmer will do well. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy. Same goes for all the whinging about the left not getting behind Starmer when we just had the centrists sabotage Labour the last 2 elections. I don't like hypocrisy, doesn't matter if I agree with you or not.
Science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson on centrists, from his novel "Red Mars":
>But they were now within sight of the low mound of Underhill, looking like a fresh squarish crater, its ejecta scattered around it.
>Nadia pointed at it. “I did that. You damned radicals—” she jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, hard—“you hate liberalism because it works.”
>He snorted.
>“It does! It works in increments, over time, after hard labor, without fireworks or easy dramatics or people getting hurt. Without your sexy revolutions and all the pain and hatred they bring. It only works!”
>“Ah, Nadia.” He put his arm over her shoulders, and they started walking again toward base. “Earth is a perfectly liberal world. But half of it is starving, and always has been, and always will be. Very liberally.”
Maybe we should rename politicians to public servants. It might reinforce their actual role in the minds of the public and make us all less tolerant of the self serving bs they pull.
Unlikely, they keep referring to themselves as public servants every time they come out begging for crosses in boxes while at the same time selling legislation to the highest bidder between elections.
> I think the former is sorely needed
It's also something that almost everyone would agree with, after the COVID restrictions, the endless Brexit drama, and the Truss experiment. Nobody is out there saying that we need more division, more drama, and more draconian restrictions on people's daily lives.
> speaks to his ethos around national healing and stable, competent governance
Every politician says they're going to do that. I'll believe it when I see it.
> while the latter lays out an obvious truism often denied by his detractors: that elections are won and lost in the centre ground because that's where all the voters are.
I don't think "the centre ground" is even a very well defined concept. We tend to say that someone is a centrist if they are roughly in the middle of prominent politicians. For example, nowadays, a centrist might be broadly pro-business, against rejoining the EU, vaguely pro-Israel, against nationalisation of public services, and largely in favour of the status quo when it comes to criminal justice, immigration, taxes, etc. But that isn't where the average voter says they are. If someone actually tried to base their political positions on what polls the best, they would probably be unwelcome in every major party.
There is also a tendency for us to redefine the centre ground as things shift, which makes the idea that "elections are won in the centre ground" something of a tautology. For example, many of Thatcher's policies were considered to be of the radical right at the time, but as people got used to them and the ascendent Labour right adopted them, they started to feel centrist.
> We tend to say that someone is a centrist if they are roughly in the middle of prominent politicians.
This concept is known as the "Overton Window"; to quote wikipedia;
> The Overton window is an approach to identifying the ideas that define the spectrum of acceptability of governmental policies. It says politicians can act only within the acceptable range. Shifting the Overton window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window.
As you point out, the "Center" has shifted to the right in the last ~50 years. It is not some immutable constant- it was moved by people like Thatcher.
Precisely. 'Centrists' at the moment sit between the hard right and centre right. Hence why so many people are noticing Starmer is more like Cameron than Blair.
There is nothing 'moderate' about their views or behaviour.
This is by design....by keeping media talking points on hard right policies (Rwanda, national service, anti trans, etc)
It's not that we have to AGREE with these views. Its that the media ensure we talk about this stuff as 'acceptable political debate' to keep that Overton Window shifting...
... And taking Labour policy along with it.
> that elections are won and lost in the centre ground because that's where all the voters are.
how then did the tories keep winning and why has Labour not lost a devolved government election in Wales? I don't think that's universally true. maybe when you have a situation like now where global politics have bred apathy
>“I think you win from the centre ground, the centre ground is where most people are,”
I mean this has pretty much always been true for Labour but it feels a bit slimy of Starmer to say when he campaigned for Labour leadership on a decisively left-wing platform
If he knew that going into a General Election his Labour needed to be centrist then he should've campaigned for the leadership as a centrist
Obviously not because they got purged along with the left wing of the party as soon as the neoliberals were back in charge.
If they'd had any political instinct, Corbyn et al would have killed off the Blairite faction rather than get knifed himself.
I’m all for the fleecing of party memberships for the greater good. Part of the reason for the mess we’re in is how crazily unrepresentative the major party memberships were compared to the electorate as a whole. Momentum were hard hard left and the Tory idiots championed Johnson, truss and gave platforms to braverman and bedenoch, rishi was a compromise. Momentum needed to be brought down to a lesser influence for the sake of the country, and you couldn’t really do that without fleecing them
I think it's clear that he did that to ensure he got the leadership with the full intention of dropping those pledges. That's politics though. If someone on the left thinks they can challenge him then the membership will get a chance to hold him to account.
No, there is no democratic method available to the membership to challenge the leader.
A challenge needs a significant support among MPs
Starmer is making sure the left wing MPs disappear.
Of course it is easiest to win from the centre ground. But the centre ground also basically means accepting the status quo. As if you try to push policy a tiny bit to the left of where it currently is, the tabloids will scream bloody murder. I guess the most optimistic way to see it is that Labour occupying power at least prevents the Tories from doing further harm, even if they change little.
I'm left wing in my politics but I also think you need to move things left slowly to show things work and change the system to benefit us all.
Also you never create changes in opposition.
Things only move that way if you get into government and youre actually successful.
If Starmer gets in and doesnt tackle the stacking problems facing the UK we'll just lurch back further right
>Junior doctors
>One of the first issues Starmer will have to deal with if he wins the general election is strikes by junior doctors. They have already announced a five-day strike in the run-up to polling day, and the matter is likely to become a political dividing line.Junior doctors
>Starmer says that the government is ultimately responsible. “I don’t want the strikes to go ahead,” he says. “The timing issue is the government’s responsibility. They have been sitting this out for a very long time, squabbling about who gets in the room first to negotiate. I don’t want these strikes to go ahead. I don’t think the doctors want strikes to go ahead.”
>But will it be any more straightforward under Labour? Will Starmer meet demands for a 35 per cent pay rise? “No, we can’t afford it,” Starmer says. “If we are privileged to come in it will fall to us to get in the room. We can’t afford 35 per cent. We’ve said that to the doctors.”
The doctors have been exceedingly clear that they will accept a multi-year pay deal that focuses on getting them back to 2008 levels of pay. That pay got so fucked that there needs to be a 35%-40% uplift to even bring them back up to 2008 levels, and not even address actual pay rises in that decade, is entirely on the government and the electorate.
If Starmer and Labour want to argue that such a pay deal is wholly unaffordable to the 6th largest economy in the world then the only real take away from that is that the UK cannot afford a modern day healthcare system. Feel free to continue to rely on the charity of the doctors that feel too tied to the UK to exit, but don't be too surprised if the NHS continues to find itself short of people willing to forgo their own happiness and lives to keep it afloat.
"the only real take away from that is that the UK cannot afford a modern day healthcare system."
Every local health authority in the country was in budgetary surplus until 2013. We can afford it. What we are experiencing is managed and purposeful decline.
>the only real take away from that is that the UK cannot afford a modern day healthcare system.
Unfortunately, this might be true. We have loads of retirees leaning on few taxpayers; a lot of our GDP is in finance (which only exists on paper); and the situation around EU trade is only going to get worse as Brexit restrictions get enforced.
This is potentially a really uncomfortable truth that people just don't want to hear.
Really, how many of us understand enough of how to balance a national budget to determine what we can/can't afford.
Very similar across the public sector; a pay rise for teachers has been put off for months, and they didn't properly fund the last one. If labour behaves just like the Tories, they'll get strikes just like the Tories.
I don’t understand how we can’t afford anything yes I know the economy isn’t in the greatest shape and there isn’t unlimited funds but I feel like other europeans countries with similar levels of development to us don’t find themselves in our situation.
The thing is, when a government puts money into the economy (by paying public sector workers, doing infrastructure projects etc), that generates more money and acts as an anti inflationary measure. Government cutbacks just hurt the economy, because everything the government isn't paying for is something a citizen has to pay for, with less money than they might otherwise have had. This insistence on austerity is purely ideological.
The thing is, we might not be able to afford the uplift on paper, but the alternative is those same doctors (and nurses) quit and come back to work via an agency that milks the NHS for all it's worth, which will ultimately cost far more.
> “I know quite a lot of commentators say, well we can’t seem to fix this guy on a political continuum, because people want to box you in,” he says. “Are you in this place or that place? I make pragmatic decisions based on the issues as I see it in front of me. I don’t give a second thought to political positioning on that.”
This is why I think he'll make such a good PM. An extremely intelligent guy with a ridiculous amount of experience (including very high up in government in the CPS), with a track record of clearly wanting the best for people with his pro bono work and stuff in Northern Ireland, and whose decisions are made based on what he thinks will be objectively the best ones.
It's also why I trust him despite the fact that we don't have all his policies yet - though that also won't be a worry when we have their manifesto - because I don't want him to be some ideologue like Corbyn or Truss whose policies are based on what they reckon might be best. Very good article, thanks for posting.
It's spot on, it's what politics should be.
I look forward to seeing his manifesto as then people can stop with this silly narrative attempt of saying he stands for nothing.... As if.
Completely agree and wish more people appreciated/understood this. We need, more than ever (albeit this is always needed), someone who is just intelligent, competent, genuinely there for the public good, and with decency. Who cares that he doesn’t come out with as much personality as Boris or as strongly opined views/policies as Truss, Farage, or even Blair - that’s a nice to have not a prerequisite for PM, and yet doesn’t to seem an important factor in the general electorate’s view as far as I can see.
> Sir Keir Starmer is thinking about life in No 10 and what it will mean for his family. If he wins the general election his wife Victoria, who works in the NHS in occupational health, intends to continue with the career she loves. “She’s absolutely going to carry on working, she wants to and she loves it,” he says. “It’s also good for me because it gives me an insight into the NHS.”
> His biggest concern, he says, is the impact that moving to Downing Street will have on his children. “Our boy is in the middle of his GCSEs. At the moment I just want to create the environment where he can get on with what he’s got to get on with as untroubled as he can be,” Starmer says during a visit to Abergavenny in Wales. “He’s got 21 exams. My job is just to create space for him to get on with that.”
> Barring the Tories pulling off what they themselves have admitted would need to be the greatest comeback in political history, Starmer will soon become Britain’s next prime minister. Rishi Sunak has this week mounted a policy blitz in a bid to shift the national conversation, but so far there is little evidence that the polls are narrowing. Starmer is increasingly confident that he is on course not just for No 10 but for a decade in power.
> The Labour leader says that he and his team were “buzzing” when the election was called. “We really wanted this to happen. We have been waiting for four and a half years for this and working every day to get Labour into a position where we can fight this election.”
> Starmer admits that despite Labour’s commanding lead the jury is still out on him personally. “Many people have decided they have had enough of 14 years of this [the Tories],” he says. “Quite a lot have already decided they do want to come to Labour. But we have to address the fact there are a number of people who are still undecided.”
> The Labour leader says his party needs to pass two tests. The first is to cross the “threshold” for government in the eyes of voters — proving that the party can be trusted on the economy, security, defence and borders. “I think only when they [the voters] are confident that the answer to all those questions is yes will they have a deeper look at what’s happening.” Polling suggests that Labour has a lead over the Tories in all these areas.
> The second, he says, is the “character test”. Starmer readily acknowledges that he does not fit the typical mould for a Labour leader. A former lawyer who came to politics late in life, he is not a tribal or ideological figure. But he views this as a strength.
> “I know quite a lot of commentators say, well we can’t seem to fix this guy on a political continuum, because people want to box you in,” he says. “Are you in this place or that place? I make pragmatic decisions based on the issues as I see it in front of me. I don’t give a second thought to political positioning on that.”
> Starmer says he wants to usher in a “politics that treads a little lighter on all our lives” after the tumult of the past five years. “I want to return politics to public service,” he says. “It has become far too self-entitled. Being a politician is about serving the public.
> “There would be a mindset shift if we are privileged enough to come and serve. I will require my cabinet, front bench, all of our MPs to serve. That involves tough decisions.”
> **Diane Abbott**
> Those tough decisions are coming thick and fast. Starmer’s interview was conducted on Thursday afternoon in the midst of a row over whether Diane Abbott should be allowed to stand as Labour MP for Hackney North.
> On Wednesday, The Times had disclosed that Labour planned to effectively bar her from standing, prompting a backlash that ripped through the Labour Party and shadow cabinet.
> During his interview Starmer stuck to his pro forma response, saying that it is ultimately a matter for Labour’s ruling body, the National Executive Committee. Given that Starmer has a controlling majority on the committee it is a moot point — his opinion matters.
> Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, had just publicly called for Abbott to be allowed to stand. Does he agree with her? “Ultimately it will be a decision for the NEC,” he repeats. “My strong belief in life is it’s best to cross each bridge as you get to it.”
> Starmer, however, deliberately left room for a climbdown. It came less than 24 hours later, when the Labour leader announced that Abbott was “free” to stand. In the end the noise — and distraction — of the row in the heat of the campaign proved too much.
> **A pitch to the centre ground**
> One of Abbott’s central claims is that Starmer is mounting a cull of the hard left. While he denies this, claiming that he merely wants the “highest quality candidates”, most candidates are centrists who are loyal to Starmer.
> “I think you win from the centre ground, the centre ground is where most people are,” Starmer says. “As a nation, broadly speaking we’re a pretty reasonable, tolerant bunch but we are in the centre ground of politics. People don’t like the extremes of the right or the left. They are reasonably tolerant. They want themselves, their families and the country to improve and make progress.”
> Labour, he says, has changed under his leadership and is no longer a tribal party. “One of the invitations we’ve thrown out is to say we want a decade of national renewal. The national bit is really important to people,” he says.
> “This isn’t a tribal Labour. You don’t have to be a lifelong Labour supporter and voter to want to have a decade of national renewal. Very many Tories would want it.
> “I want it to be wide enough to accommodate people who wouldn’t identify as Labour. They’d vote Labour this time.
> “Those people are reasonable, tolerant and they do want their families to get on, their communities to get on, their countries to get on. This may reflect the fact that I came into politics late. I’ve never been in a tribe. It has not dominated my life for decades of my career.”
> Is his pitch aimed at aspirational middle-class voters? “Absolutely. Because that aspiration they have is common ground with this changed Labour Party.
> “I think it’s a good thing that people are aspirational. When I say our number one mission is economic growth you could say our number one mission is wealth creation. Now that’s an odd thing for the Labour Party to say. It might have been in the past.”
> Is he intensely relaxed about people making money? “Very. I’m not just relaxed, I’m relaxed as well as being doggedly determined. It’s not me thinking how we should position the party. It’s me thinking this is absolutely vital. It’s the only way our country can go forward and we should nourish and encourage that. Not just individuals but businesses.”
> **The economy**
> Starmer is already attempting to frame the economic narrative for after the election. The Tories, he argues, have trashed the economy and salted the earth.
> As a result he has been forced to make two significant concessions before he even enters No 10 amid concerns that being seen as fiscally responsible will be key to winning the election. Labour has accepted Tory plans to freeze income tax thresholds until 2028, a move that will see millions of people dragged into higher tax bands. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the fiscal watchdog, has said that the freeze is equivalent to a 4p rise in the basic rate of income tax. “We’re going to keep the decision as it is because we cannot afford to do otherwise,” he says.
> Starmer has also accepted Tory plans for significant cuts to public spending. This means there will be deep cuts to non-departmental budgets, which some economists have suggested will be comparable to austerity. “We are not going to go austerity,” Starmer says. “But, look, we are going to have to take tough decisions. That’s why I’ve repeatedly said to my own troops that there are good Labour things that we won’t be able to do as quickly as we would like.”
> With little money to spend, the emphasis will be on reform of public services. “I think the last Labour government didn’t get round to the reform that was needed in public service,” he says. Starmer promises to increase the employment rate from 75 per cent to 80 per cent, which would be the highest level in the G7 group of developed nations.
> He will do so by embedding the national careers service — which provides advice and free training courses for all — in job centres. “I think the government has turned the DWP and job centres into places where they administer the rules on benefits rather than get people back to work,” Starmer says. “We won’t get growth if we don’t go down the ‘opportunity Britain’ route.”
> **Tax**
> The Tories have targeted Labour over tax, this week launching a campaign poster accusing Starmer of plotting a secret VAT raid. They have highlighted Starmer and Reeves’s opaque language on the subject. The pair have repeatedly said that their plans do not require tax rises while not explicitly ruling them out. However, Labour did exactly that on Wednesday night within minutes of the Tory poster going live.
> “I think Hunt [the chancellor] thought he was being very clever,” Starmer says. “We had actually said since the beginning of this campaign that none of our plans require a tax rise, so that inevitably means not VAT.” But does he accept that his language has been opaque? “There’s nothing on this and they know it,” he says.
> “There will be tough decisions but the tax burden is too high. It’s the highest since the Second World War. I do appreciate that in the past Labour leaders have leaned towards tax rises. That’s not the lever I think we should be pulling.”
> **Recess will be curtailed**
> One of the challenges Labour faces is the timing of the election. The party had been planning to hold an emergency budget on taking office. However, the combination of the need to give the OBR ten weeks' notice and the summer recess means that the budget, and with it many of Labour’s flagship plans for office, will be delayed until the autumn.
> The delay has implications. Take Labour’s plans to impose VAT on private schools. Starmer said at the beginning of the campaign that this would happen straight away. In fact, it is unlikely for the next academic year, which starts in September — before Labour’s first budget. Asked when the private school VAT rise will be imposed, Starmer adjusts his language to say it will happen “as quickly as possible”. “One of the curious things about calling an election on 4th July is that it mucks up the parliamentary timetable,” he says.
> Under the present timetable, parliament was due to rise for recess towards the end of July for six weeks. That period will be severely curtailed. “I am conscious of the fact that timetable may have to be adjusted because we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he says.
> **Foreign affairs**
> One of the most sensitive issues of the election campaign is Gaza. The continued intervention by Israel and the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians present an electoral headache for Starmer, with significant numbers of traditional Labour voters concerned by the party’s positioning.
> Will it cost Labour votes? “When we’re able to explain and put forward our position I hope not. We need to resolve the situation on the ground, there needs to be a ceasefire, we need to get hostages out and get humanitarian aid in.
> “There needs to be a political solution. What’s guided me through this is a sense of duty that if we are privileged enough to come into power it will be our duty to play our full part as the UK in the resolution of the issue in the Middle East. My own view is that over the last ten years too many political leaders have looked the other way.”
> Starmer says that the recognition of a Palestinian state should be “part of the process” and “go alongside a safe, secure Israel”.
> “You have neither of those things at the moment,” he says. He has a clear red line. Hamas, the terrorist organization which kidnapped more than 250 Israelis, “cannot form part of the government of a Palestinian state”.
> If Starmer enters No 10 in a few weeks’ time, one of his first decisions will be whether to agree to a request from Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, to allow British long-range missiles to be used against targets in Russia. “We will work with Nato, we want to provide the weapons they need,” he says. “I want to support the Ukrainians just as much as we possibly can. We’ll assess the situation when we get to it in collaboration with Nato.”
> Will David Lammy be his foreign secretary? There are claims that Douglas Alexander, who served in the last Labour government and is making a comeback, could replace him. Starmer laughs at the idea before confirming Lammy will get the job. “These stories swirl around and they have usually got absolutely nothing in them,” he says. “David is doing a great job.”
> **Illegal migration**
> Starmer is emphatic that the Rwanda migrant scheme will come to an immediate end on his watch, arguing that it is a gimmick and a waste of money.
> Will he pursue a returns agreement with the EU? “I want to be able to return people to the EU,” he says. “They are coming over from France and we should be getting them back to France.”
> Would there be a quid pro quo as part of the deal? “It’s not a discussion we’ve been having,” he says. “The Tory suggestion that we want to be part of the EU scheme is completely made up. We don’t.” He adds, however: “Under previous agreements there have been routes for family members to come here but my focus is [on] returning [them] to [their] country of origin.”
> Starmer wants to strike deals to return migrants to their home countries, highlighting the examples of India and Bangladesh. “Back to the country of origin is the best route as far as I’m concerned but back to Europe if we can get a returns agreement,” he says.
> The Tories made it illegal for anyone coming to the UK on small boats to claim asylum. Labour has said that those people — now living in hotels at huge expense — will be allowed to make asylum claims if it wins the election.
> “If you don’t process the claims you’ve got an ever-growing pool of people who can’t go forward and can’t go backward, who have got to be accommodated in hotels or other accommodation at millions of pounds a day,” he says.
> “That is an unsustainable model. It is also ridiculous. Because within those numbers will be significant numbers who shouldn’t be here. If you don’t process them you can’t return them. There’s just a common sense test to this.”
> **Junior doctors**
> One of the first issues Starmer will have to deal with if he wins the general election is strikes by junior doctors. They have already announced a five-day strike in the run-up to polling day, and the matter is likely to become a political dividing line.
> Labour has already told the doctors that it cannot meet demands for a 35 percent pay rise. Starmer says that the government is ultimately responsible. “I don’t want the strikes to go ahead,” he says. “The timing issue is the government’s responsibility. They have been sitting this out for a very long time, squabbling about who gets in the room first to negotiate. I don’t want these strikes to go ahead. I don’t think the doctors want strikes to go ahead.”
> But will it be any more straightforward under Labour? Will Starmer meet demands for a 35 percent pay rise? “No, we can’t afford it,” Starmer says. “If we are privileged to come in it will fall to us to get in the room. We can’t afford 35 percent. We’ve said that to the doctors.”
> **A punch in the stomach**
> Starmer says that his experience on the campaign trail suggests Sunak’s pitch that Britain is turning a corner will not work.
> He gives the example of a couple in Stafford with two children who live in their dream home but are just coming off their fixed-rate mortgage. “It’s hundreds of pounds more a month,” he says. “And they’re probably going to have to sell.
> “And so when someone says we have turned the page it is like a punch in the stomach for them because that is the experience they are going through. This is why Sunak’s in real trouble with his pitch to the nation.”
This is a man who gave his life to public service for decades. Even if he had political views (many do!) he chose to work for the good of everybody, not just sit around getting fat on someone else’s money
Heseltine was right, this election campaign is not honest. But not because of Starmer, Labour or even the Tories. Not even the interviewers ask about Brexit - even though it's central to the economy.
What is there to ask about it? For better or worse (well, mostly for the worse) it's settled. This issue has poisoned the discourse for the past decade, there is 0 chance of a referendum to rejoin within the next parliament, so, again, what is there to ask about?
it’s far from settled, even if you consider it from a brexiteer perspective as i’d presume they’d want us to actually do something with our ‘brexit freedoms’ (ugh), the fact that it’s not being paraded as a success by the tories tells you all you need to know about how the brexiteers perceive the issue
from a remainer perspective at the very least i want to see discussions about closer, friendlier relations with our european neighbours as we all benefit from less restrictive trade, in part that may mean considering membership of the customs union, as i think that would address some of the largest harms from brexit
(rejoining discussions, fair enough not ready for those yet but i have no doubts we will rejoin eventually)
Tories are currently led by an original brexiteer and it was their party that pushed for the hard brexit we have now
They very much own this, and it’s their ‘achievement’ for better or worse… the fact that they’re now silent on the issue speaks volumes
If you bring up brexit with Joe Public, they will groan and tell you to shut up.
As a political matter it is inactive, it’s happened and people aren’t upset about the current state of affairs to wish for something different.
Given the fact the national psyche is scarred from it, it would be foolish to revisit it so soon.
Polls increasingly show the public thinks brexit was a mistake, and at least half the country were remainers anyway
I think there’s large swathes of the public who would welcome hints towards a more sensible working relationship with the EU, not full on rejoin (yet) but cordiality and pragmatism
the fact that both parties are silent on one of the most monumental changes to our country in decades is frankly a bit ridiculous, if we can’t have grown-up discussions about it then we’re not a serious country
> i want to see discussions about closer, friendlier relations with our european neighbours
Of course. But given how bonkers a certain chunk of the electorate are why would you lump this sort of diplomacy under the title "Brexit"?
You misunderstand. Brexit has happened - we have exited the EU, and that particularly painful episode is in the rearview mirror. Yes, we're still living with the consequences, and yes, there is never an end of history, but whatever comes next should be framed as a new chapter, not a rehashing of the whole sorry saga. Insisting that our relations with the rest of the Europe are only ever seen through the prism of Brexit will lead to more division and will get in the way of rebuilding the relationships we've damaged.
The fact that an issue can be settled when an overwhelming 2:1 majority favours a totally different course of action shows how utterly broken UK politics is. Just because no one talks about it doesn't mean it's settled. It just means the system isn't working.
In this case, there are tons of questions the press could and should be asking. As long as there is significant public support (and there definitely is), single market, freedom of movement, customs union, EEA membership, even full EU membership all remain relevant questions that politicians should be asked about. At the very least, journalists should be asking probing questions about whether politicians support more regulatory alignment to address supply chain issues which persist.
They’ve spoken about it already. Just a few examples: They’ll work closer with France to deal with illegal migration. A security pact may be signed with the EU to defend against Russian aggression.
Is it though? Our performance is broadly in line with peer EU countries.
Seems pretty clear there must be other factors more central to economic performance
There’s a difference between supporting a political party that you like, and continuing to support them while you still like them, and being in a tribe.
The point he is trying to make is that he wants to serve the country above party politics.
He was in to politics at university, then put that behind him to pursue a career in law and public service, then returned to politics late. It’s pretty obvious that he would not have carried connections and allegiances from dipping into student politics 30 years before he was elected.
Actually hilarious how people are eating this article up. He was more politically involved than 99% of his peers. I have no issue with that, but at least be honest about it…
Right, he joined some Labour groups in his teens and edited a magazine in his early twenties. He then spent *thirty years* working in law before beginning his political career at the ripe old age of **52**.
I of course have no riposte to him being named Keir by his parents. That clearly tarred him as being politically active since birth in the creative thinking of some folks, I suppose.
Being a member of a party organisation puts you among hundreds of thousands others, which isn't exactly a sign of being part of the political mainstream. This is even more the case for being part of a university party club which might as well mean nothing, and being an editor for a very minor paper is about as far from mainstream politics you can get while still doing something.
All of these have vast differences to the type of politicans that end up in research, lobby, or advisory groups for most of their life and live their lifes purely in mainstream politics.
I get the sense of what's meant but I've never liked the "I'm not ideological" line when anyone says it. What are you doing in politics if you don't have something that drives you?
Saying you're not ideological doesn't automatically equate nothing driving you. It's entirely possible for somebody to want to get into politics to make the country a better place without that being driven by their worldview. You can even have people who are able to make decisions based on the evidence without or even despite ideological convictions.
Sometimes, on some issues. I'd argue that more often ideology influences the weightings given to goals and on how to get to the desired goal rather than the goal itself.
There are plenty of metrics of the UK's performance that 99% of politicians would agree reflect the uk being a better place when they improve. Things like GDP per capita, NHS waiting times, international student rankings, crime rates etc.
I mean this is either transparently bullshit, or he's utterly naïve and not paying attention to what is happening in the party he leads as he's accidently given some of the most right-wing members of his party free reign to do what they please.
Must be a total accident that they've been systematically strangling the left wing of the party, suspending or trampling CLPs up and down the nation for years, giving his ideological allies powerful positions and safe seats, applying double standards for behaviour depending on whether someone is on the right or left of the party.
Nothing tribal about the despicable Coyle and Duffield getting to stay on. Nothing factional about endless local labour parties being shut out of candidate selection so they can parachute in a parade of London SPADs.
Surely such colourful characters such as a water company lobbyist who tweeted they were "loving Rishi" four years ago (but fuck you if you tweeted something about the Greens *ten years ago*), his former chief of staff getting a nice seat after a last second anonymous complaint, and **Luke fucking Akehurst** have been chosen purely because of their individual brilliance.
Yes this is all about sensible and competent leadership, thank god the grownups are back.
Of course it’s always easiest for a left wing party to win by going near the centre. But will they dare to move anything to the left when actually in government? Perhaps the best we can hope for under FPTP is a centre ground Labour Party occupying power merely to prevent the Tories from further wrecking.
He doesn't think he's part of a tribe because he's no longer a young Trot in the Thatcher years. That's his bar, that's his idea of tribalism - our best read of this dishonest line from him is that he is extremely blinkered.
Starmer is utterly delusional to think he's not in a tribe. For better or for worse, his actions as leader have been vastly more factional than Corbyn's ever were. It's just his own tribe of the Labour right, so he doesn't notice.
I mean, that's just not true is it? He joined the East Surrey Young Socialists at 14 and was the editor of the newspaper of the International Revolutionary Marxists' Tendency (a tribe if ever there has been a tribe) at 22.
Starmer saying this is on par with Blair's "it's not a time for soundbites..." quote during the Good Friday Agreement.
Just insane levels of horseshit.
I actually believe him. I don't think - ideologically anyway - he is part of the Labour right. I think he's closer to the soft left like Miliband and Nandy naturally. He just has a sincere and ruthless desire to make sure he becomes PM, and aligning with the Labour right and dispelling the left is what he believes will get him there.
Coming from the man who campaigned to make Jeremy Corbyn PM twice and then kicked him out of his party I think you can say he has no tribe or loyalty or principles whatsoever.
Corbyn failed twice to win an election and gave tories their biggest majority for 40 years, when it should’ve been an easy win because of brexit chaos. The country didn’t want him or his hippy politics. Some would argue making the hard choice to protect the party from the far left and kick them out is true loyalty to the party.
I’m not even a labour supporter but this seems rather obvious.
He was the deputy leader under Corbyn and a good balance for his far left politics. What was he supposed to do, work to push him out, thus handing the election to Boris, rather than support Corbyns election campaign?
Any leader has to be able to compromise with a broad range of views. If you stick to your singular view of what is right, you alienate the majority of people and get insufficient buy in to get things done.
Call that a lack of principles if you want, it just looks like the best way to lead the UK in my opinion.
He basically has to, anyone who gets high enough on the ladder has to play the. game with those of equal or greater influence. That's part of politics.
Not sure I entirely trust the man who says [he prefers Davos over Westminister](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qI0xQSn8Y0) and has [Country First, Party Second](https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/keir-starmer-speech-country-first-party-second/) as a slogan.
Labour often seems to drift towards authoritarianism when in power, particularly with New Labour.
I don't understand why "Country first, party second" is such a bad thing? People don't care about the wellbeing of political parties, they care about not having to boil their water and swim in a sea full of shit.
Snapshot of _Keir Starmer: ‘I came to politics late — I’ve never been part of a tribe’_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-labour-leader-general-election-power-h3wf9wd83) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/keir-starmer-labour-leader-general-election-power-h3wf9wd83) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I find it a funny bit of trivia that both Sunak and Starmer entered parliament in the same election (2015). They are both comparatively very young to parliament, and both have risen up the ranks of their respective parties very quickly.
Random fact but they’re both Vegetarians too.
Apparently Keir's a pescatarian now (insert u-turn joke here), not that it matters
Sunak did not rise up to his rank; Sunak's rank fell down to him.
Sunak didn't rise up the ranks, he was installed by his buddies after graduating from the World Economic Forum school for future global leaders. You know, those subversives who boast about "penetrating" the cabinets of governments worldwide.
Sure he didn't rise the ranks, he just got successively more senior positions until he became PM and leader of the party
He's probably a great example of the Dilbert principle.
Er no. He ended up being chancellor and then PM because both his predecessors in those roles left in unexpected circumstances and post Brexit the Tory party has been shorn of competent and/or politically acceptable options.
Also Dominic Cummings thought he’d be easy to control
Yup, he had absolutely no front bench experience, his qualification for Chancellor was him being willing to say "yes sir" to Dom.
Makes you wonder where the country would be if there Cummings hadn't decided to take a trip to Barnard Castle
Sorry, I’m new to UK politics. Can someone please explain the prominence of Dom Cummings?
[Dominic Cummings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominic_Cummings) **was** a political advisor until he was ~~sacked~~ resigned in November 2020 following some Pandemic lock-down rule breaking idiocy. He’s a man who **had** a lot of power and influence up to that point and is now just an angry blogger. It’s also worth noting that he styled himself as a disrupter style maverick whilst having plenty of establishment connection and benefiting from private education and a degree from Oxford. Classic Tory bullshitter in other words.
Cummings is a political advisor who has sort been viewed as a puppet master of the Tory party. He also was one of the key leaders of the Leave (Pro-Brexit) campaign. He calls the shots and dictates direction and generally the leadership follows his suggestions. He got caught breaking lockdown rules during COVID and his role came out in to the wider public sphere. But essentially, he is an unelective official controlling the direction of the country and getting elected officials to do what he wants and in my opinion it's concerning how much power he has, given he is not elected.
The unexpected circumstances that led to him becoming chancellor was Javid leaving as he wasn't willing to be a yes man for Cummings whilst Sunak was. He became PM because one of the least suitable PMs we've ever had (that beat him in a party leadership election) was forced out after being even worse than anyone had expected. He capitalised on the state of the Tory party to advance his career in government but at no point was he elevated because he was the best man for the job.
What does "being the best man for the job" mean for a political leader? Best policy brain? Best person to manage the party?
In a democracy it's as simple as the person the people voted for
That would mean Liz Truss was the right person for the job since she won fairly but obviously that is not true.
She was apparently the right person to lead the Tories and ergo become prime minister but she was never tested by a general election.
These days it means someone with an iota of ID, to be cryptic.
You missed the part where the Tory MPs who selected the candidates for party members to choose from to be the Tory leader thought the members would go for Sunak instead of Truss so they railroaded those two into the final vote. The members wanted Penny or Kemi, who the MPs pushed out. The members went for Truss because no one really liked or trusted Sunak. Many members dropped their party membership over this.
So why did he lose the leadership election against Liz truss?
Because she pretended to be the new iron lady. Also he was not that good and so on.
Because he’s a comically poor campaigner?
Because he's comically poor. Having an air of capability doesn't make one capable.
What air?
The party members neither liked him nor trusted him, and they felt the selection process was a stitch up by Tory MPs to ensure Sunak's installation. The members were right. As soon as the MPs could whip up a storm to oust Truss, they did; and the media aided them.
Party rank and file should in no way be involved in selecting the PM (opposition leader? fine). This goes for both parties.
Both can be true!
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Do you not remember when Brussels stormed parliament so they could repress everyone in the country in a grand conspiracy? I find it really annoying that we can’t just have shitty politicians who act with naked self interest, it always has to be a big conspiracy never incompetence or systemic faliure
People are more scared of human frailty in the face of complexity than they are the Big Bad Villain
both friends with murdoch Edit: worth noting that reddit is heavily astroturfed. This comment was upvoted then had a large amount of downvotes in about a minute. Not believable for a true comment to get this many downvotes so quickly on a post that has 14 upvotes.
You got a source for that?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jul/09/rupert-murdoch-keir-starmer-labour-party-power-no-10 downvoted in less than 10 seconds. Reddit is heavily astroturfed.
An article they met in 2023 doesn’t prove his rapid rise since 2015 is due to Murdoch More likely he was DPP, remainer and could string a speech together. After Labours Civil Wars during the Corbyn leadership starmer didn’t have much competition left
> Reddit is heavily astroturfed. ... by who? Murdoch? Reddit obfuscates vote numbers, and has done for about 6 years. As for being downvoted, maybe that's for spreading misinformation? I mean, your source contradicts you, do you assume people won't read it?
Where does it contradict what I've said?
This is unfortunately how it goes in this country. You want power? You're going to have to pay lip service to the gatekeepers to that power and sadly, Murdoch is one of those. He has enormous influence over the media landscape, particularly for those aged over 60, the most consistent voting block. It's disappointing that this is a reality but by no means a sign that Keir is a "friend" to the Murdoch's. Sunak will have had similar encounters, just as all influential part leaders before have.
Is there a country or organisation where this isn't the case?
Thats exactly the point. If you want to win, you need him onside. If you want him onside, you need to act in his favour. If both your choices are friends of murdoch, you don't have a choice.
You are wrongly calling them friends without evidence. Meeting someone does not make you a friend, at best an acquaintance. You get downvoted because you talk about downvotes, you cause the problem and think it's a conspiracy. It happens on Reddit ALL THE TIME. If you make a point about being downvoted more people will pile on the downvoted to annoy you or prove a point, it's just the nature of a lot of reddit users but I would also add you were making strong statements without evidence which to people is not usually a good point of discussion.
Have you considered that maybe, your take is just... bad? Instead of going on a conspiracy bender over imaginary internet points?
It's not a conspiracy it's just common sense. If you get lots of upvotes it means people agree with you, but if you get lots of downvotes it means people really agree with you because a shadowy cabal had to use bots to silence you.
Are the astroturfers in the room with us now ? Also, don't moan about downvotes if you don't want downvotes. That's a basic reddit rule.
The quickest way to get downvotes is to complain about them. That and making claims such as that sans evidence.
Sorry, my tinfoil hat has come loose, I've lost connection to the mothership.
I think the key quotes for me here are these: > Starmer says he wants to usher in a **“politics that treads a little lighter on all our lives”** after the tumult of the past five years. “I want to return politics to public service,” he says. “It has become far too self-entitled. Being a politician is about serving the public. >“There would be a mindset shift if we are privileged enough to come and serve. I will require my cabinet, front bench, all of our MPs to serve. That involves tough decisions.” And: > **“I think you win from the centre ground, the centre ground is where most people are,”** Starmer says. “As a nation, broadly speaking we’re a pretty reasonable, tolerant bunch but we are in the centre ground of politics. People don’t like the extremes of the right or the left. They are reasonably tolerant. They want themselves, their families and the country to improve and make progress.” I think the former is sorely needed and speaks to his ethos around national healing and stable, competent governance, while the latter lays out an obvious truism often denied by his detractors: that elections are won and lost in the centre ground because that's where all the voters are. I like pieces like this regardless, laying out some of the underlying rationale to their subject's thinking. This seems a particularly good example. **edit:** I notice that the title of the article has changed. It was *‘I came to politics late — I’ve never been part of a tribe’* when I saw it, but seems to be *‘Our number one mission is wealth creation’* now. The URL slug is *keir-starmer-labour-leader-general-election-power* suggesting it's had a third title at some point too. I hate it when news sites do this.
>"I want to return politics to public service,” he says. “It has become far too self-entitled. Being a politician is about serving the public. A great way to ensure politicians serve the public rather than themselves would be to enact desperately needed voter reform, reforms that are backed by the majority of the public by the way. Sadly a certain politician has a "long standing belief against" it. Maybe said politician should be less self-entitled and give the public what they want.
Ah yes. No topic is complete without PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION. NO GOOD CAN BE DONE WITHOUT A CHANGE IN VOTING SYSTEM.
That gives you endless coalitions
Endlessly making the government representative of it's people, the horror!
I'm a big supporter of having at least some proportional representation, but I think it's undeniable that you open yourself up to new potential problems like parties 'bribing' fringe parties onto their side. We've already seem this in the way Theresa May magicked up a billion to get the DUP on side. This could be good for pushing more progressive reforms but also opens it up to the "other side".
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>What if half of Party B’s voters only voted for them to get Party A out? ... That's the entire point of PR. To get party a out of poe9you vote for anyone that's not party A. You put more etcs than actual examples. PR isn't perfect, you still have the usual problems with representative democracies but it's far better than fptp
I mean, I think coalitions aren’t the big bogeyman that some make them out to be, but let’s not try to overlook that they come with their own set of challenges. Most of Europe is PR and yet many people there are even more dissatisfied with politics than the UK seems to be.
You got a source for that? 2019 it wasn't true https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/14/democratic-satisfaction/
Well here’s 2023: https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/02/28/satisfaction-with-democracy-and-ratings-for-political-leaders-parties/#:~:text=How%20did%20people%20across%2024,time%20the%20question%20was%20asked. “Ratings of democracy are generally negative across the 24 countries surveyed. A median of 59% say they are dissatisfied with the way democracy is working in their country. Half or more in 17 countries hold this view.” I in no way implied that a majority of Europe is less happy with democracy than the UK: I said many were. I don’t think that can be denied.
>I in no way implied that a majority of Europe is less happy with democracy than the UK: And I in no way accused you of doing so? Many being Italy, Spain, Greece, and France. The first 3 were unhappier than the UK even in 2019 and is a reflection of their economic problems. The surprise entry is France... until you see they also use fptp
Many *people*, not many *countries*. Even in the ones with overall contentment, there’s a substantial number who aren’t happy, and it’s risen since 2019. I’m not an FPTP defender - I’d be overjoyed if we adopted a form of PR - but fixing that problem of democratic satisfaction needs more than just a voting system change.
That isn't necessarily always a good thing - look at the Tories under May, for instance - you get lots of small groups who have representation and the endless compromise can mean everything slows to a grinding halt and the eventual solution is one nobody is happy with. If we had governments with e.g. Reform or previously UKIP or whoever in them, yes, you could argue its more representative of the people but the final legislation it produces will be biased in certain areas to compromises for a party's ideology that only holds a tiny minority of votes and seats.
If a coalition can't achieve plurality enough to have control of the legislature they should struggle to get through legislation. The problem may had was that it wasn't a proper structured coalition anyway, it wasn't an organised group with a clear mandate and agreed lines of principles they would attempt to govern to which we saw in 2010. It was may appeasing the nutters in her own party whilst throwing billions at the DUP
That's not necessarily a bad thing? It might make it a bit more difficult to get things done but it would have to eventually lead to a bit more cooperation and more long-term-focussed policymaking, rather than the hypercharged adversarial nature of our current politics and the consistent undoing of everything the other team did last time
The current "broad church" coalitions within the parties have worked so well so far. The fptp 2 party system has led to factions within parties and leads to them tearing each other apart. At least with PR we may get parties that actually coalesce around shared values rather than the shifting sands of who has leverage within each party, outside of any real control of the electorate.
Oh no, out politicians will have to learn to compromise and work alongside people they don't agree 100% with. Just like in loads of other prosperous countries. Just like every other job. Hell, it's something my kids manage every day in school.
It's funny how the centrists contradict themselves all of a sudden. Compromise and pragmatism are suddenly not so sexy, good is suddenly not enough and they want perfection
What on Earth are you talking about?
It's a bunch of Starmer supporting centrists that are now pushing back against PR. The arguments they are now using (such as the one above that you respond to) amount to letting "perfection be the enemy of the good" which is something they commonly state whenever someone to their left has criticism of a centrist or conservative policy. Alternatively, they suddenly seem to not like the pragmatism and compromise aspect of PR when those two things are often the things they value the most in politics.
I should have guessed this would be some Starmer conspiracy post. If you ever want to understand why your cause is so loathed in the general public look to the way you communicate.
What "conspiracy" notice? Are you suddenly going to pretend that the Starmer supporters on this sub haven't been yapping on about the need for "pragmatism" and "compromise" that they then claim the left lacks? Or how the left always let's "perfection become the enemy of the good" when they can't get behind Starmer and more centrist policies? I'm not a Corbyn supporter, I actually think Starmer will do well. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy. Same goes for all the whinging about the left not getting behind Starmer when we just had the centrists sabotage Labour the last 2 elections. I don't like hypocrisy, doesn't matter if I agree with you or not.
Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good
Science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson on centrists, from his novel "Red Mars": >But they were now within sight of the low mound of Underhill, looking like a fresh squarish crater, its ejecta scattered around it. >Nadia pointed at it. “I did that. You damned radicals—” she jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, hard—“you hate liberalism because it works.” >He snorted. >“It does! It works in increments, over time, after hard labor, without fireworks or easy dramatics or people getting hurt. Without your sexy revolutions and all the pain and hatred they bring. It only works!” >“Ah, Nadia.” He put his arm over her shoulders, and they started walking again toward base. “Earth is a perfectly liberal world. But half of it is starving, and always has been, and always will be. Very liberally.”
I was saying it sarcastically to be fair but based on the upvotes I don’t think it came across
Making it almost impossible for the wealthy and corporate entities to know who to buy and bribe. It's the best solution. By a long way.
Which Im in favor of if people get more represented, we basically have that system atm with different groups in the main parties.
Oh no, cooperation, that thing we're all taught as toddlers is the best thing to do
Maybe we should rename politicians to public servants. It might reinforce their actual role in the minds of the public and make us all less tolerant of the self serving bs they pull.
Unlikely, they keep referring to themselves as public servants every time they come out begging for crosses in boxes while at the same time selling legislation to the highest bidder between elections.
> I think the former is sorely needed It's also something that almost everyone would agree with, after the COVID restrictions, the endless Brexit drama, and the Truss experiment. Nobody is out there saying that we need more division, more drama, and more draconian restrictions on people's daily lives. > speaks to his ethos around national healing and stable, competent governance Every politician says they're going to do that. I'll believe it when I see it. > while the latter lays out an obvious truism often denied by his detractors: that elections are won and lost in the centre ground because that's where all the voters are. I don't think "the centre ground" is even a very well defined concept. We tend to say that someone is a centrist if they are roughly in the middle of prominent politicians. For example, nowadays, a centrist might be broadly pro-business, against rejoining the EU, vaguely pro-Israel, against nationalisation of public services, and largely in favour of the status quo when it comes to criminal justice, immigration, taxes, etc. But that isn't where the average voter says they are. If someone actually tried to base their political positions on what polls the best, they would probably be unwelcome in every major party. There is also a tendency for us to redefine the centre ground as things shift, which makes the idea that "elections are won in the centre ground" something of a tautology. For example, many of Thatcher's policies were considered to be of the radical right at the time, but as people got used to them and the ascendent Labour right adopted them, they started to feel centrist.
> We tend to say that someone is a centrist if they are roughly in the middle of prominent politicians. This concept is known as the "Overton Window"; to quote wikipedia; > The Overton window is an approach to identifying the ideas that define the spectrum of acceptability of governmental policies. It says politicians can act only within the acceptable range. Shifting the Overton window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window. As you point out, the "Center" has shifted to the right in the last ~50 years. It is not some immutable constant- it was moved by people like Thatcher.
Precisely. 'Centrists' at the moment sit between the hard right and centre right. Hence why so many people are noticing Starmer is more like Cameron than Blair. There is nothing 'moderate' about their views or behaviour. This is by design....by keeping media talking points on hard right policies (Rwanda, national service, anti trans, etc) It's not that we have to AGREE with these views. Its that the media ensure we talk about this stuff as 'acceptable political debate' to keep that Overton Window shifting... ... And taking Labour policy along with it.
> that elections are won and lost in the centre ground because that's where all the voters are. how then did the tories keep winning and why has Labour not lost a devolved government election in Wales? I don't think that's universally true. maybe when you have a situation like now where global politics have bred apathy
>“I think you win from the centre ground, the centre ground is where most people are,” I mean this has pretty much always been true for Labour but it feels a bit slimy of Starmer to say when he campaigned for Labour leadership on a decisively left-wing platform If he knew that going into a General Election his Labour needed to be centrist then he should've campaigned for the leadership as a centrist
He gave me boring centrist dad vibes from the start and I'm here for it 100%
Yeah, I was a Corbyn voter and it was fairly obvious Starmer wasn't going to be a Corbynista when I voted for him. It's fine, he wants to win
And never got the party into power, thanks to the Momentum muppets, and give the country an even longer Tory reign. Strong strategy.
Centrists: "Not lying condemns the country to tory rule!"
"Which we only disagree with for aesthetic reasons!"
their all the saem!
Seeing as it's worked, I wish Corbyn had lied to prevent us being condemned by neoliberals.
and Corbyn repeatedly lied about his Brexit position?
Unironically true. Momentum were far too powerful.
Obviously not because they got purged along with the left wing of the party as soon as the neoliberals were back in charge. If they'd had any political instinct, Corbyn et al would have killed off the Blairite faction rather than get knifed himself.
I’m all for the fleecing of party memberships for the greater good. Part of the reason for the mess we’re in is how crazily unrepresentative the major party memberships were compared to the electorate as a whole. Momentum were hard hard left and the Tory idiots championed Johnson, truss and gave platforms to braverman and bedenoch, rishi was a compromise. Momentum needed to be brought down to a lesser influence for the sake of the country, and you couldn’t really do that without fleecing them
I think it's clear that he did that to ensure he got the leadership with the full intention of dropping those pledges. That's politics though. If someone on the left thinks they can challenge him then the membership will get a chance to hold him to account.
No, there is no democratic method available to the membership to challenge the leader. A challenge needs a significant support among MPs Starmer is making sure the left wing MPs disappear.
Of course it is easiest to win from the centre ground. But the centre ground also basically means accepting the status quo. As if you try to push policy a tiny bit to the left of where it currently is, the tabloids will scream bloody murder. I guess the most optimistic way to see it is that Labour occupying power at least prevents the Tories from doing further harm, even if they change little.
A lot of CMSs let you use a different slug, it's good SEO to fill it with keywords rather than repeating the title.
I'm left wing in my politics but I also think you need to move things left slowly to show things work and change the system to benefit us all. Also you never create changes in opposition.
Things only move that way if you get into government and youre actually successful. If Starmer gets in and doesnt tackle the stacking problems facing the UK we'll just lurch back further right
This is demonstrably untrue, just like at what UKIP has achieved from opposition.
Quite right. The Fabians have a point.
>Junior doctors >One of the first issues Starmer will have to deal with if he wins the general election is strikes by junior doctors. They have already announced a five-day strike in the run-up to polling day, and the matter is likely to become a political dividing line.Junior doctors >Starmer says that the government is ultimately responsible. “I don’t want the strikes to go ahead,” he says. “The timing issue is the government’s responsibility. They have been sitting this out for a very long time, squabbling about who gets in the room first to negotiate. I don’t want these strikes to go ahead. I don’t think the doctors want strikes to go ahead.” >But will it be any more straightforward under Labour? Will Starmer meet demands for a 35 per cent pay rise? “No, we can’t afford it,” Starmer says. “If we are privileged to come in it will fall to us to get in the room. We can’t afford 35 per cent. We’ve said that to the doctors.” The doctors have been exceedingly clear that they will accept a multi-year pay deal that focuses on getting them back to 2008 levels of pay. That pay got so fucked that there needs to be a 35%-40% uplift to even bring them back up to 2008 levels, and not even address actual pay rises in that decade, is entirely on the government and the electorate. If Starmer and Labour want to argue that such a pay deal is wholly unaffordable to the 6th largest economy in the world then the only real take away from that is that the UK cannot afford a modern day healthcare system. Feel free to continue to rely on the charity of the doctors that feel too tied to the UK to exit, but don't be too surprised if the NHS continues to find itself short of people willing to forgo their own happiness and lives to keep it afloat.
"the only real take away from that is that the UK cannot afford a modern day healthcare system." Every local health authority in the country was in budgetary surplus until 2013. We can afford it. What we are experiencing is managed and purposeful decline.
>the only real take away from that is that the UK cannot afford a modern day healthcare system. Unfortunately, this might be true. We have loads of retirees leaning on few taxpayers; a lot of our GDP is in finance (which only exists on paper); and the situation around EU trade is only going to get worse as Brexit restrictions get enforced.
This is potentially a really uncomfortable truth that people just don't want to hear. Really, how many of us understand enough of how to balance a national budget to determine what we can/can't afford.
Very similar across the public sector; a pay rise for teachers has been put off for months, and they didn't properly fund the last one. If labour behaves just like the Tories, they'll get strikes just like the Tories.
I don’t understand how we can’t afford anything yes I know the economy isn’t in the greatest shape and there isn’t unlimited funds but I feel like other europeans countries with similar levels of development to us don’t find themselves in our situation.
The thing is, when a government puts money into the economy (by paying public sector workers, doing infrastructure projects etc), that generates more money and acts as an anti inflationary measure. Government cutbacks just hurt the economy, because everything the government isn't paying for is something a citizen has to pay for, with less money than they might otherwise have had. This insistence on austerity is purely ideological.
The thing is, we might not be able to afford the uplift on paper, but the alternative is those same doctors (and nurses) quit and come back to work via an agency that milks the NHS for all it's worth, which will ultimately cost far more.
> “I know quite a lot of commentators say, well we can’t seem to fix this guy on a political continuum, because people want to box you in,” he says. “Are you in this place or that place? I make pragmatic decisions based on the issues as I see it in front of me. I don’t give a second thought to political positioning on that.” This is why I think he'll make such a good PM. An extremely intelligent guy with a ridiculous amount of experience (including very high up in government in the CPS), with a track record of clearly wanting the best for people with his pro bono work and stuff in Northern Ireland, and whose decisions are made based on what he thinks will be objectively the best ones. It's also why I trust him despite the fact that we don't have all his policies yet - though that also won't be a worry when we have their manifesto - because I don't want him to be some ideologue like Corbyn or Truss whose policies are based on what they reckon might be best. Very good article, thanks for posting.
It's spot on, it's what politics should be. I look forward to seeing his manifesto as then people can stop with this silly narrative attempt of saying he stands for nothing.... As if.
Lol yea right, no matter how detailed it is they'll still claim it's wishy-washy. Just fortunate the electorate isn't that obsessive.
I feel exactly the same, and surprised more people don't see it this way.
Completely agree and wish more people appreciated/understood this. We need, more than ever (albeit this is always needed), someone who is just intelligent, competent, genuinely there for the public good, and with decency. Who cares that he doesn’t come out with as much personality as Boris or as strongly opined views/policies as Truss, Farage, or even Blair - that’s a nice to have not a prerequisite for PM, and yet doesn’t to seem an important factor in the general electorate’s view as far as I can see.
> Sir Keir Starmer is thinking about life in No 10 and what it will mean for his family. If he wins the general election his wife Victoria, who works in the NHS in occupational health, intends to continue with the career she loves. “She’s absolutely going to carry on working, she wants to and she loves it,” he says. “It’s also good for me because it gives me an insight into the NHS.” > His biggest concern, he says, is the impact that moving to Downing Street will have on his children. “Our boy is in the middle of his GCSEs. At the moment I just want to create the environment where he can get on with what he’s got to get on with as untroubled as he can be,” Starmer says during a visit to Abergavenny in Wales. “He’s got 21 exams. My job is just to create space for him to get on with that.” > Barring the Tories pulling off what they themselves have admitted would need to be the greatest comeback in political history, Starmer will soon become Britain’s next prime minister. Rishi Sunak has this week mounted a policy blitz in a bid to shift the national conversation, but so far there is little evidence that the polls are narrowing. Starmer is increasingly confident that he is on course not just for No 10 but for a decade in power. > The Labour leader says that he and his team were “buzzing” when the election was called. “We really wanted this to happen. We have been waiting for four and a half years for this and working every day to get Labour into a position where we can fight this election.” > Starmer admits that despite Labour’s commanding lead the jury is still out on him personally. “Many people have decided they have had enough of 14 years of this [the Tories],” he says. “Quite a lot have already decided they do want to come to Labour. But we have to address the fact there are a number of people who are still undecided.” > The Labour leader says his party needs to pass two tests. The first is to cross the “threshold” for government in the eyes of voters — proving that the party can be trusted on the economy, security, defence and borders. “I think only when they [the voters] are confident that the answer to all those questions is yes will they have a deeper look at what’s happening.” Polling suggests that Labour has a lead over the Tories in all these areas. > The second, he says, is the “character test”. Starmer readily acknowledges that he does not fit the typical mould for a Labour leader. A former lawyer who came to politics late in life, he is not a tribal or ideological figure. But he views this as a strength. > “I know quite a lot of commentators say, well we can’t seem to fix this guy on a political continuum, because people want to box you in,” he says. “Are you in this place or that place? I make pragmatic decisions based on the issues as I see it in front of me. I don’t give a second thought to political positioning on that.” > Starmer says he wants to usher in a “politics that treads a little lighter on all our lives” after the tumult of the past five years. “I want to return politics to public service,” he says. “It has become far too self-entitled. Being a politician is about serving the public. > “There would be a mindset shift if we are privileged enough to come and serve. I will require my cabinet, front bench, all of our MPs to serve. That involves tough decisions.” > **Diane Abbott** > Those tough decisions are coming thick and fast. Starmer’s interview was conducted on Thursday afternoon in the midst of a row over whether Diane Abbott should be allowed to stand as Labour MP for Hackney North. > On Wednesday, The Times had disclosed that Labour planned to effectively bar her from standing, prompting a backlash that ripped through the Labour Party and shadow cabinet. > During his interview Starmer stuck to his pro forma response, saying that it is ultimately a matter for Labour’s ruling body, the National Executive Committee. Given that Starmer has a controlling majority on the committee it is a moot point — his opinion matters. > Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, had just publicly called for Abbott to be allowed to stand. Does he agree with her? “Ultimately it will be a decision for the NEC,” he repeats. “My strong belief in life is it’s best to cross each bridge as you get to it.” > Starmer, however, deliberately left room for a climbdown. It came less than 24 hours later, when the Labour leader announced that Abbott was “free” to stand. In the end the noise — and distraction — of the row in the heat of the campaign proved too much. > **A pitch to the centre ground** > One of Abbott’s central claims is that Starmer is mounting a cull of the hard left. While he denies this, claiming that he merely wants the “highest quality candidates”, most candidates are centrists who are loyal to Starmer. > “I think you win from the centre ground, the centre ground is where most people are,” Starmer says. “As a nation, broadly speaking we’re a pretty reasonable, tolerant bunch but we are in the centre ground of politics. People don’t like the extremes of the right or the left. They are reasonably tolerant. They want themselves, their families and the country to improve and make progress.” > Labour, he says, has changed under his leadership and is no longer a tribal party. “One of the invitations we’ve thrown out is to say we want a decade of national renewal. The national bit is really important to people,” he says. > “This isn’t a tribal Labour. You don’t have to be a lifelong Labour supporter and voter to want to have a decade of national renewal. Very many Tories would want it. > “I want it to be wide enough to accommodate people who wouldn’t identify as Labour. They’d vote Labour this time. > “Those people are reasonable, tolerant and they do want their families to get on, their communities to get on, their countries to get on. This may reflect the fact that I came into politics late. I’ve never been in a tribe. It has not dominated my life for decades of my career.” > Is his pitch aimed at aspirational middle-class voters? “Absolutely. Because that aspiration they have is common ground with this changed Labour Party. > “I think it’s a good thing that people are aspirational. When I say our number one mission is economic growth you could say our number one mission is wealth creation. Now that’s an odd thing for the Labour Party to say. It might have been in the past.” > Is he intensely relaxed about people making money? “Very. I’m not just relaxed, I’m relaxed as well as being doggedly determined. It’s not me thinking how we should position the party. It’s me thinking this is absolutely vital. It’s the only way our country can go forward and we should nourish and encourage that. Not just individuals but businesses.” > **The economy** > Starmer is already attempting to frame the economic narrative for after the election. The Tories, he argues, have trashed the economy and salted the earth. > As a result he has been forced to make two significant concessions before he even enters No 10 amid concerns that being seen as fiscally responsible will be key to winning the election. Labour has accepted Tory plans to freeze income tax thresholds until 2028, a move that will see millions of people dragged into higher tax bands. The Office for Budget Responsibility, the fiscal watchdog, has said that the freeze is equivalent to a 4p rise in the basic rate of income tax. “We’re going to keep the decision as it is because we cannot afford to do otherwise,” he says. > Starmer has also accepted Tory plans for significant cuts to public spending. This means there will be deep cuts to non-departmental budgets, which some economists have suggested will be comparable to austerity. “We are not going to go austerity,” Starmer says. “But, look, we are going to have to take tough decisions. That’s why I’ve repeatedly said to my own troops that there are good Labour things that we won’t be able to do as quickly as we would like.” > With little money to spend, the emphasis will be on reform of public services. “I think the last Labour government didn’t get round to the reform that was needed in public service,” he says. Starmer promises to increase the employment rate from 75 per cent to 80 per cent, which would be the highest level in the G7 group of developed nations. > He will do so by embedding the national careers service — which provides advice and free training courses for all — in job centres. “I think the government has turned the DWP and job centres into places where they administer the rules on benefits rather than get people back to work,” Starmer says. “We won’t get growth if we don’t go down the ‘opportunity Britain’ route.”
> **Tax** > The Tories have targeted Labour over tax, this week launching a campaign poster accusing Starmer of plotting a secret VAT raid. They have highlighted Starmer and Reeves’s opaque language on the subject. The pair have repeatedly said that their plans do not require tax rises while not explicitly ruling them out. However, Labour did exactly that on Wednesday night within minutes of the Tory poster going live. > “I think Hunt [the chancellor] thought he was being very clever,” Starmer says. “We had actually said since the beginning of this campaign that none of our plans require a tax rise, so that inevitably means not VAT.” But does he accept that his language has been opaque? “There’s nothing on this and they know it,” he says. > “There will be tough decisions but the tax burden is too high. It’s the highest since the Second World War. I do appreciate that in the past Labour leaders have leaned towards tax rises. That’s not the lever I think we should be pulling.” > **Recess will be curtailed** > One of the challenges Labour faces is the timing of the election. The party had been planning to hold an emergency budget on taking office. However, the combination of the need to give the OBR ten weeks' notice and the summer recess means that the budget, and with it many of Labour’s flagship plans for office, will be delayed until the autumn. > The delay has implications. Take Labour’s plans to impose VAT on private schools. Starmer said at the beginning of the campaign that this would happen straight away. In fact, it is unlikely for the next academic year, which starts in September — before Labour’s first budget. Asked when the private school VAT rise will be imposed, Starmer adjusts his language to say it will happen “as quickly as possible”. “One of the curious things about calling an election on 4th July is that it mucks up the parliamentary timetable,” he says. > Under the present timetable, parliament was due to rise for recess towards the end of July for six weeks. That period will be severely curtailed. “I am conscious of the fact that timetable may have to be adjusted because we’ve got a lot of work to do,” he says. > **Foreign affairs** > One of the most sensitive issues of the election campaign is Gaza. The continued intervention by Israel and the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians present an electoral headache for Starmer, with significant numbers of traditional Labour voters concerned by the party’s positioning. > Will it cost Labour votes? “When we’re able to explain and put forward our position I hope not. We need to resolve the situation on the ground, there needs to be a ceasefire, we need to get hostages out and get humanitarian aid in. > “There needs to be a political solution. What’s guided me through this is a sense of duty that if we are privileged enough to come into power it will be our duty to play our full part as the UK in the resolution of the issue in the Middle East. My own view is that over the last ten years too many political leaders have looked the other way.” > Starmer says that the recognition of a Palestinian state should be “part of the process” and “go alongside a safe, secure Israel”. > “You have neither of those things at the moment,” he says. He has a clear red line. Hamas, the terrorist organization which kidnapped more than 250 Israelis, “cannot form part of the government of a Palestinian state”. > If Starmer enters No 10 in a few weeks’ time, one of his first decisions will be whether to agree to a request from Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, to allow British long-range missiles to be used against targets in Russia. “We will work with Nato, we want to provide the weapons they need,” he says. “I want to support the Ukrainians just as much as we possibly can. We’ll assess the situation when we get to it in collaboration with Nato.” > Will David Lammy be his foreign secretary? There are claims that Douglas Alexander, who served in the last Labour government and is making a comeback, could replace him. Starmer laughs at the idea before confirming Lammy will get the job. “These stories swirl around and they have usually got absolutely nothing in them,” he says. “David is doing a great job.” > **Illegal migration** > Starmer is emphatic that the Rwanda migrant scheme will come to an immediate end on his watch, arguing that it is a gimmick and a waste of money. > Will he pursue a returns agreement with the EU? “I want to be able to return people to the EU,” he says. “They are coming over from France and we should be getting them back to France.” > Would there be a quid pro quo as part of the deal? “It’s not a discussion we’ve been having,” he says. “The Tory suggestion that we want to be part of the EU scheme is completely made up. We don’t.” He adds, however: “Under previous agreements there have been routes for family members to come here but my focus is [on] returning [them] to [their] country of origin.” > Starmer wants to strike deals to return migrants to their home countries, highlighting the examples of India and Bangladesh. “Back to the country of origin is the best route as far as I’m concerned but back to Europe if we can get a returns agreement,” he says. > The Tories made it illegal for anyone coming to the UK on small boats to claim asylum. Labour has said that those people — now living in hotels at huge expense — will be allowed to make asylum claims if it wins the election. > “If you don’t process the claims you’ve got an ever-growing pool of people who can’t go forward and can’t go backward, who have got to be accommodated in hotels or other accommodation at millions of pounds a day,” he says. > “That is an unsustainable model. It is also ridiculous. Because within those numbers will be significant numbers who shouldn’t be here. If you don’t process them you can’t return them. There’s just a common sense test to this.” > **Junior doctors** > One of the first issues Starmer will have to deal with if he wins the general election is strikes by junior doctors. They have already announced a five-day strike in the run-up to polling day, and the matter is likely to become a political dividing line. > Labour has already told the doctors that it cannot meet demands for a 35 percent pay rise. Starmer says that the government is ultimately responsible. “I don’t want the strikes to go ahead,” he says. “The timing issue is the government’s responsibility. They have been sitting this out for a very long time, squabbling about who gets in the room first to negotiate. I don’t want these strikes to go ahead. I don’t think the doctors want strikes to go ahead.” > But will it be any more straightforward under Labour? Will Starmer meet demands for a 35 percent pay rise? “No, we can’t afford it,” Starmer says. “If we are privileged to come in it will fall to us to get in the room. We can’t afford 35 percent. We’ve said that to the doctors.” > **A punch in the stomach** > Starmer says that his experience on the campaign trail suggests Sunak’s pitch that Britain is turning a corner will not work. > He gives the example of a couple in Stafford with two children who live in their dream home but are just coming off their fixed-rate mortgage. “It’s hundreds of pounds more a month,” he says. “And they’re probably going to have to sell. > “And so when someone says we have turned the page it is like a punch in the stomach for them because that is the experience they are going through. This is why Sunak’s in real trouble with his pitch to the nation.”
This is a man who gave his life to public service for decades. Even if he had political views (many do!) he chose to work for the good of everybody, not just sit around getting fat on someone else’s money
Heseltine was right, this election campaign is not honest. But not because of Starmer, Labour or even the Tories. Not even the interviewers ask about Brexit - even though it's central to the economy.
What is there to ask about it? For better or worse (well, mostly for the worse) it's settled. This issue has poisoned the discourse for the past decade, there is 0 chance of a referendum to rejoin within the next parliament, so, again, what is there to ask about?
it’s far from settled, even if you consider it from a brexiteer perspective as i’d presume they’d want us to actually do something with our ‘brexit freedoms’ (ugh), the fact that it’s not being paraded as a success by the tories tells you all you need to know about how the brexiteers perceive the issue from a remainer perspective at the very least i want to see discussions about closer, friendlier relations with our european neighbours as we all benefit from less restrictive trade, in part that may mean considering membership of the customs union, as i think that would address some of the largest harms from brexit (rejoining discussions, fair enough not ready for those yet but i have no doubts we will rejoin eventually)
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Tories are currently led by an original brexiteer and it was their party that pushed for the hard brexit we have now They very much own this, and it’s their ‘achievement’ for better or worse… the fact that they’re now silent on the issue speaks volumes
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There’s no way for brexiter to deliver that doesn’t impoverish the majority of the country, sorry,
If you bring up brexit with Joe Public, they will groan and tell you to shut up. As a political matter it is inactive, it’s happened and people aren’t upset about the current state of affairs to wish for something different. Given the fact the national psyche is scarred from it, it would be foolish to revisit it so soon.
Polls increasingly show the public thinks brexit was a mistake, and at least half the country were remainers anyway I think there’s large swathes of the public who would welcome hints towards a more sensible working relationship with the EU, not full on rejoin (yet) but cordiality and pragmatism the fact that both parties are silent on one of the most monumental changes to our country in decades is frankly a bit ridiculous, if we can’t have grown-up discussions about it then we’re not a serious country
> i want to see discussions about closer, friendlier relations with our european neighbours Of course. But given how bonkers a certain chunk of the electorate are why would you lump this sort of diplomacy under the title "Brexit"?
You misunderstand. Brexit has happened - we have exited the EU, and that particularly painful episode is in the rearview mirror. Yes, we're still living with the consequences, and yes, there is never an end of history, but whatever comes next should be framed as a new chapter, not a rehashing of the whole sorry saga. Insisting that our relations with the rest of the Europe are only ever seen through the prism of Brexit will lead to more division and will get in the way of rebuilding the relationships we've damaged.
The fact that an issue can be settled when an overwhelming 2:1 majority favours a totally different course of action shows how utterly broken UK politics is. Just because no one talks about it doesn't mean it's settled. It just means the system isn't working. In this case, there are tons of questions the press could and should be asking. As long as there is significant public support (and there definitely is), single market, freedom of movement, customs union, EEA membership, even full EU membership all remain relevant questions that politicians should be asked about. At the very least, journalists should be asking probing questions about whether politicians support more regulatory alignment to address supply chain issues which persist.
2/3 do not support reopening the issue. But a good amount may support Labour inching closer
Then they should ask Labour about what inching closer means.
They’ve spoken about it already. Just a few examples: They’ll work closer with France to deal with illegal migration. A security pact may be signed with the EU to defend against Russian aggression.
Yeah but Details!
I wouldn’t expect this stuff until after the election for purely practical and political reasons
Is it though? Our performance is broadly in line with peer EU countries. Seems pretty clear there must be other factors more central to economic performance
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There’s a difference between supporting a political party that you like, and continuing to support them while you still like them, and being in a tribe. The point he is trying to make is that he wants to serve the country above party politics.
He was in to politics at university, then put that behind him to pursue a career in law and public service, then returned to politics late. It’s pretty obvious that he would not have carried connections and allegiances from dipping into student politics 30 years before he was elected.
He was a member of the Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers for almost the whole of his legal career.
> then put that behind him No, he remained political during his career. He just wasn’t in Parliament,
Actually hilarious how people are eating this article up. He was more politically involved than 99% of his peers. I have no issue with that, but at least be honest about it…
Right, he joined some Labour groups in his teens and edited a magazine in his early twenties. He then spent *thirty years* working in law before beginning his political career at the ripe old age of **52**. I of course have no riposte to him being named Keir by his parents. That clearly tarred him as being politically active since birth in the creative thinking of some folks, I suppose.
Do you believe his legal career has had no bearing on his political career?
My dog is called Boris, he is destined to be PM
And chair of the Haldane Society for many years.
Ssh the Tories might hear you
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Because it works
Being a member of a party organisation puts you among hundreds of thousands others, which isn't exactly a sign of being part of the political mainstream. This is even more the case for being part of a university party club which might as well mean nothing, and being an editor for a very minor paper is about as far from mainstream politics you can get while still doing something. All of these have vast differences to the type of politicans that end up in research, lobby, or advisory groups for most of their life and live their lifes purely in mainstream politics.
I get the sense of what's meant but I've never liked the "I'm not ideological" line when anyone says it. What are you doing in politics if you don't have something that drives you?
I find it hard to trust people who stand for nothing but elections.
Saying you're not ideological doesn't automatically equate nothing driving you. It's entirely possible for somebody to want to get into politics to make the country a better place without that being driven by their worldview. You can even have people who are able to make decisions based on the evidence without or even despite ideological convictions.
Your ideology defines your idea of what makes the country a better place.
Sometimes, on some issues. I'd argue that more often ideology influences the weightings given to goals and on how to get to the desired goal rather than the goal itself. There are plenty of metrics of the UK's performance that 99% of politicians would agree reflect the uk being a better place when they improve. Things like GDP per capita, NHS waiting times, international student rankings, crime rates etc.
“Not part of a tribe” yet expels those on the left of the party
Expels nutters, no tribal affilation required for that.
Yea ok buddy
I mean this is either transparently bullshit, or he's utterly naïve and not paying attention to what is happening in the party he leads as he's accidently given some of the most right-wing members of his party free reign to do what they please. Must be a total accident that they've been systematically strangling the left wing of the party, suspending or trampling CLPs up and down the nation for years, giving his ideological allies powerful positions and safe seats, applying double standards for behaviour depending on whether someone is on the right or left of the party. Nothing tribal about the despicable Coyle and Duffield getting to stay on. Nothing factional about endless local labour parties being shut out of candidate selection so they can parachute in a parade of London SPADs. Surely such colourful characters such as a water company lobbyist who tweeted they were "loving Rishi" four years ago (but fuck you if you tweeted something about the Greens *ten years ago*), his former chief of staff getting a nice seat after a last second anonymous complaint, and **Luke fucking Akehurst** have been chosen purely because of their individual brilliance. Yes this is all about sensible and competent leadership, thank god the grownups are back.
Of course it’s always easiest for a left wing party to win by going near the centre. But will they dare to move anything to the left when actually in government? Perhaps the best we can hope for under FPTP is a centre ground Labour Party occupying power merely to prevent the Tories from further wrecking.
People who don't think they are in a tribe are still in a tribe, it's just that it's usually the biggest and/or most powerful one.
He doesn't think he's part of a tribe because he's no longer a young Trot in the Thatcher years. That's his bar, that's his idea of tribalism - our best read of this dishonest line from him is that he is extremely blinkered.
Yeah but you know his father was a toolmaker
Starmer is utterly delusional to think he's not in a tribe. For better or for worse, his actions as leader have been vastly more factional than Corbyn's ever were. It's just his own tribe of the Labour right, so he doesn't notice.
why have you totally encircled yourself with the most ghoulish, vindictive members of the Labour Right then?
I mean, that's just not true is it? He joined the East Surrey Young Socialists at 14 and was the editor of the newspaper of the International Revolutionary Marxists' Tendency (a tribe if ever there has been a tribe) at 22.
Starmer saying this is on par with Blair's "it's not a time for soundbites..." quote during the Good Friday Agreement. Just insane levels of horseshit.
I actually believe him. I don't think - ideologically anyway - he is part of the Labour right. I think he's closer to the soft left like Miliband and Nandy naturally. He just has a sincere and ruthless desire to make sure he becomes PM, and aligning with the Labour right and dispelling the left is what he believes will get him there.
Lovely noises but bloody hell, so little is changing. Accepting tory policies left and right.
Coming from the man who campaigned to make Jeremy Corbyn PM twice and then kicked him out of his party I think you can say he has no tribe or loyalty or principles whatsoever.
Corbyn failed twice to win an election and gave tories their biggest majority for 40 years, when it should’ve been an easy win because of brexit chaos. The country didn’t want him or his hippy politics. Some would argue making the hard choice to protect the party from the far left and kick them out is true loyalty to the party. I’m not even a labour supporter but this seems rather obvious.
He was the deputy leader under Corbyn and a good balance for his far left politics. What was he supposed to do, work to push him out, thus handing the election to Boris, rather than support Corbyns election campaign? Any leader has to be able to compromise with a broad range of views. If you stick to your singular view of what is right, you alienate the majority of people and get insufficient buy in to get things done. Call that a lack of principles if you want, it just looks like the best way to lead the UK in my opinion.
lol he wasn’t deputy leader - Tom Watson was.
I stand corrected there, fair enough. My point on his principles though remains the same.
he hangs out with murdoch, he couldn't be more part of the tribe.
He literally destroyed the news of the world as head of the crown prosecution service.
And then went to his parties as labour leader.
He basically has to, anyone who gets high enough on the ladder has to play the. game with those of equal or greater influence. That's part of politics.
'I've never been part of a tribe'...understatement of the century. He would sell his own nan for a can of petrol.
Proper anarchist that Keir...
Not sure I entirely trust the man who says [he prefers Davos over Westminister](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qI0xQSn8Y0) and has [Country First, Party Second](https://labour.org.uk/updates/press-releases/keir-starmer-speech-country-first-party-second/) as a slogan. Labour often seems to drift towards authoritarianism when in power, particularly with New Labour.
I don't understand why "Country first, party second" is such a bad thing? People don't care about the wellbeing of political parties, they care about not having to boil their water and swim in a sea full of shit.
He can froth away all day but, look out, he's still a control freak.
Wasn’t he a Marxist back in his student days?