Keir starmer

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sir Keir is having a wobble. That’s obvious. The Labour leader holds an equestrian title, so he naturally feels at home on his high horse. Today at PMQs he loftily commanded Boris not to raise taxes in the budget. That was hilarious. A Labour leader begging a Tory Prime Minister not to implement Labour policy. If Sir Keir had produced a viola from his trousers and played ‘Waltzing Matilda’ he couldn’t have looked more ridiculous. Boris was so stunned that he could barely speak. ‘Well, I don’t know about you Mr Speaker,’ he bumbled. Then he pointed out that in 2019 Sir Keir had ‘stood on a manifesto to put

The right is usually much better than the left at harnessing the awesome power of the folk memories that surround Britain’s heroic second world war struggle. The idea of British exceptionalism at its most evocative moment between 1939 and 1945 was crucial to Brexit and crucial to securing popular backing for the Falklands War a generation earlier too. So for Keir Starmer to base his economic pitch for power not on modern monetary theory or any other piece of leftish guru-jargon, but instead on drawing parallels with the reforming post-war Labour administration of Clement Attlee is smart politics. The Attlee government has a powerful mythology of its own that adds