Is Keir Starmer a Tory?

Slashing the winter fuel allowance, maintaining the two child benefit cap, cutting international aid, cutting the civil service, axing NHS bureaucracy, possibly slashing welfare expenditure… you’d be forgiven for thinking the Conservatives were in power. But no, these are all policies pursued by the current Labour government. So on today’s Saturday Shots Cindy Yu asks Michael Gove and James Heale, is Keir Starmer a Tory?

While Michael admits to giving Starmer a ‘painful’ two cheers, he does say there is historic precedent for Labour government enacting right-leaning measures: from Jim Callaghan’s migration policies to the economic ones of Ramsay MacDonald. How has Starmer got away with it? And what does his premiership of pragmatism tell us about the future direction of Labour?

Michael sets out a number of tests to judge Starmer’s success by: the tests of Fraser Nelson, Robert Jenrick, Ernie Bevan, Denis Healey and Bob Mellish… 

Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Cindy Yu.