Keir starmer

Boris’s mask slipped at PMQs

Oh dear. Those texts. A bit awkward isn’t it? At PMQs, Sir Keir quizzed Boris about the exchanges between James Dyson and the PM which have been leaked by a saboteur. Boris was rattled. The texts reveal a side of his nature that he wants kept secret. The smug and rather puerile grandee luxuriating in his power and status. Look at me. Marvel at my cleverness. Watch as I solve your problems with my fingertips. See how ministers leap at my command. This will permanently damage a man who likes to pose as the people’s servant, toiling night and day to restore the fortunes of a once mighty kingdom. Sir

Nick Tyrone

Starmer’s absurd reaction to the Dyson lobbying ‘scandal’

In the midst of the David Cameron-Greensill lobbying scandal — a gift to the Labour party if ever there was one — Keir Starmer’s frontbench have managed to overshoot the mark. Talking up what she clearly hoped will be another storm for the government to weather, shadow business minister Lucy Powell had some strong words: It stinks, really, that a billionaire businessman can text the Prime Minister and get an immediate response and apparently an immediate change in policy. It seems like the country only works for people who are rich enough or influential enough and, frankly, donors to the Tory party, who have the personal mobile number of the

Starmer has ‘dodgy Dave’ to thank for his best ever PMQs

‘Keir today, gone tomorrow.’ The whisper before Easter was that Labour’s troubled leader might not survive until the next election but the spectre of Tory sleaze – which felled John Major’s government – has come to the rescue. Sir Keir started PMQs by alluding to David Cameron’s freelance activities for Greensill Capital. ‘Are the current lobbying rules fit for purpose?’ he asked. Boris tried the ‘nothing to see here’ approach. He wants to smother the controversy by appointing a legal sleuth with a spectacularly dull name, Nigel Boardman, whose findings will be delivered in June. So for the next two months the PM can happily refer every question to ‘the

Starmer will regret his submission to liberal intolerance

Keir Starmer obviously regrets visiting Jesus House last week because of the furore it has caused in his own party. But he will likely come to regret his reaction even more. The Labour leader posted a full apology for the Pentecostal church visit, saying: ‘I completely disagree with Jesus House’s beliefs on LGBT+ rights, which I was not aware of before my visit. I apologise for the hurt my visit caused and have taken down the video. It was a mistake and I accept that.’ The whole thing is, as Brendan O’Neill points out, rather awkward, given Starmer chose to visit this church during a key Christian festival and given

Katy Balls

Does Keir Starmer really oppose vaccine passports?

As opposition grows to government plans to introduce vaccine passports, not even the Prime Minister appears keen to defend the proposals. In Monday’s press conference, Johnson refused to be drawn into a conversation about the plans and wouldn’t even say whether there would be a Commons vote on the policy. However, government figures suggest the proposals will be put to a vote should they be given the green light in government. So, how will Keir Starmer vote when the time comes? Today Labour have suggested they will oppose the plans for domestic vaccine passports in their current form. A Labour source told Politico they were unlikely to support the plans

Barry Gardiner’s holy day howler

As a young man, Barry Gardiner planned to become an Episcopal priest, serving as secretary of the Scottish Christian Movement. Fortunately for the country however, Gardiner decided that first academia and then politics were his true calling, rising eventually to the giddy heights in government of being Gordon Brown’s special representative on forestry and then Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow trade secretary in opposition.  Having stunned Westminster with a one day wonder bid to be Labour leader, he returned to the backbenches last April where he has largely remained a dutifully loyal presence in spite of some social distancing rule breaking. But as a onetime wannabe vicar on the holiest day of the Christian calendar, Mr

Femi Oluwole’s Labour ultimatum

It has been a difficult few years for Remainer campaigner Femi Oluwole. Having failed to stop Brexit, secure a second referendum or prevent the Tories winning a majority in 2019, you might have thought the last four years would have chastened the ‘Our Future Our Choice’ founder. Not a bit of it. Oluwole, 31, is now turning his hand to journalism with the same aplomb that he brought to political campaigning. In a series of bizarre tweets this afternoon that sounded like outtakes from a Liam Neeson Taken sequel, Oluwole told Labour’s team that he was ‘currently writing an article which it’s in your interest to stop’ and added ‘You have my number.

Steerpike

Keir Starmer’s church trip backfires

Monday will officially mark a ‘Year of Keir’ as Starmer celebrates the first anniversary of his election as Labour leader. It’s been 12 months of frequent clashes with the party’s once powerful left faction including the sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey, the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn and the decision to abstain on the ‘spy cops’ bill. Moderates meanwhile grumble about Starmer’s decision to attack the government on competence rather than values – a decision that backfired once vaccines arrived in December. Surely then an Easter trip to a church offered Starmer a chance to have his party singing for once from the same hymn sheet? Alas not. It seems the Leader’s Office managed to choose the wrong church, judging

Can Starmer overcome his Hartlepool problem?

Labour have picked their candidate in Hartlepool ahead of the rest of the pack. Unfortunately for them, they have chosen poorly. More than that, the candidate himself and the way he was selected have put Labour’s wider problems clearly on display. For a start, just so we can get it out of the way, the fact that the term ‘Tory MILFs’ was prominent in the news all weekend doesn’t say a lot on its own about a wise candidate selection by Labour. This, in case you missed it, refers to some social media posts Paul Williams was responsible for many years ago that were a little less than politically correct

Whatever happened to young Keir Starmer?

This week’s Spectator looks at the role Sir Keir Starmer has played in granting the government extraordinary emergency powers to deal with the rise of Covid. The Labour leader appears happy to maintain such restrictions on the right to protest and even tried to bolster his credentials on law and order by backing under fire Met Commissioner Cressida Dick. But Mr S has done some digging in the archives and it shows Sir Keir was not always such a fan of the police. His works from the 1980s and 1990s prior to taking silk as a QC show a strong libertarian-left streak and a disdain for authoritarian justice and a

James Forsyth

Unopposed: why is Keir Starmer making life so easy for the PM?

If there is one thing worse than being talked about, it is not being talked about — and this is the fate beginning to befall Keir Starmer. He is at risk of becoming an irrelevance. After not even a year of being Labour leader, Starmer finds his personal ratings on the slide: a YouGov poll this week showed his rating at minus 13, down from plus 22 last summer. Just over half of voters think he doesn’t look like a PM-in-waiting and Labour itself is consistently trailing the Tories in the polls. It’s not clear yet what Starmer stands for, and he is running out of time to make an

Katy Balls

Starmer’s long game: party repair comes before opposition politics

What is Keir Starmer thinking? His approach might baffle Tory MPs, who wonder if he will ever spring to life. The answer, though, is that he’s playing a long game. He hopes he will be a strong opposition leader when the time is right. For now, it is time to offer support to Boris Johnson’s government. The pandemic has created tricky terrain for the shadow cabinet. Much like in wartime, normal political rules don’t apply, because ‘people want the government to succeed’. Starmer’s supporters say coronavirus means the Labour party has been squeezed out of the conversation. It’s not as simple as Starmer not knowing what he wants, even if

Starmer’s prosecution campaign is misguided

On Monday evening Sir Keir Starmer tweeted an explanation for why Labour would not be supporting the Police, Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill. Coming from a former director of public prosecutions this was dire stuff. First, and perhaps least importantly, the word ‘statues’ does not appear in the Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill. Sir Keir knows this. What the Bill proposes is that where criminal damage is caused to a ‘memorial’ there should be no minimum financial limit before the case can be tried in the Crown Court, where the maximum sentence is ten years imprisonment. In practice, such a sentence has never, so far as I am aware, been

Lloyd Evans

PMQs was an unseemly scrap

It’s bizarre to see political enemies laying claim to the purest of motives when they’re fighting like dogs to extract political advantage from the week’s hottest issue. At PMQs were treated to the unseemly spectacle of party leaders using the appalling death of Sarah Everard for personal gain. Sir Keir Starmer called it, ‘a tragedy so shocking it demands justice and change’. And he called on his opponent to ‘collectively rise to this moment.’ Boris was caught off-guard. Pre-session he’d crammed his head with stats about nurses’ pay and soaring vaccination rates. Suddenly had to talk about sexual violence. He scoured his mental archive for a useful fact or figure

Voting down the police bill could backfire on Keir Starmer

Labour has decided today that it will be opposing the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill when it has its second reading in the Commons tomorrow. Some of the party’s MPs say they had been told they would be whipped to abstain on this stage of the Bill, but following the scenes on Clapham Common last night, shadow frontbenchers have rushed to say they will vote against. I understand that the party hadn’t reached a firm position on whipping until today, though there had been discussions within the PLP about what the position would be. But there was a discussion this morning between Sir Keir Starmer, Shadow Home Secretary Nick

Isabel Hardman

How will politicians respond to the policing of the Clapham vigil?

Late last night, politicians started scrambling to express their concern about the policing of a vigil held on Clapham Common in the memory of Sarah Everard. After images of police officers arresting women on the ground emerged, Home Secretary Priti Patel said she found some of the footage ‘upsetting’ and would be asking the Metropolitan Police for a ‘full report’. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called the scenes ‘disturbing’ and said, ‘this was not the way to police this protest’. The political implications of last night’s policing decisions are going to be very difficult for both Patel and Starmer. This week, the Police, Crime and Sentencing Bill has its second

Keir Starmer’s failed attempt at PMQs comedy

A glimpse of normality returned to PMQs today. For once the pandemic didn’t dominate. And Sir Keir tried a new tactic. He hammered Boris on a single issue. Nurse’s pay. Finally he’s realised that he should look for a nasty bruise and punch it again and again. Boris had memorised a counter-attack which bristled with impressive statistics. Starting salaries for nurses have increased by 12.8 per cent in the last three years. Students can avail of two types of bursaries worth either £3k or £5k. An extra 10,600 nurses are already on the wards. ‘And in one year alone there are another 49,000 people working in our NHS.’ Sir Keir

Labour’s TikTok paranoia

As if the Labour party didn’t have enough to worry about with its withering opinion poll ratings, yesterday’s Times reveals that party officials are warning MPs of another potential danger: malicious TikTok parodies. The paper reports that Sir Keir himself is one of several Labour MPs whose names have been used by hard-left TikTok pranksters keen to cause trouble for the party’s Leadership. One user is apparently impersonating a shadow cabinet minister while using the antifa-linked slogan ACAB (all cops are bastards). Labour is now apparently lobbying the Chinese-owned video giant to remove the false accounts to avoid confusion. Well, quelle surprise really. For all its runaway viral success (with some

Nick Tyrone

Labour has stumbled into the royal culture war

Given Starmer’s aim of getting red wall voters back on side, Labour should not have touched the Harry and Meghan debate with a bargepole. It is a massively loaded cultural issue that can only hurt them. And yet it seems they couldn’t help themselves. Kate Green, the shadow education secretary, has said in a television interview that Meghan’s claims of racism should be ‘fully investigated’ by the Palace. This is exactly the kind of move that leaves only confustion when trying to work out about what Starmer is trying to accomplish. I feel like I’m the only person who lives in Great Britain who doesn’t really care that much either way

Boris’s aid cuts problem isn’t going away

Sir Keir Starmer will have spent far more time preparing his response to today’s Budget which comes after Prime Minister’s Questions, but he did also manage to highlight a problem that isn’t going away for the government in his questions to Boris Johnson. The Labour leader chose to focus his stint on Yemen, criticising the British government’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, and the decision to cut international aid money to the war-torn country. Johnson insisted that ‘when it comes to the people of Yemen, we continue to step up to the plate’. The most instructive question was on whether MPs will get a vote on the cuts to aid. Starmer