Keir starmer

Growth, growth, growth: that was what Keir Starmer told us would be his government’s priority in his first press conference as Prime Minister. Nearly three months on, as the Labour party heads into its first conference in power for 15 years, it is becoming ever harder to reconcile Starmer’s promise with the policies that his government seems determined to deliver. With junior doctors voting to accept a 22 per cent pay rise, yet another group of public sector workers has been lavished with financial reward without any obligation to accept or implement more productive working practices. The NHS is in the midst of a pay bonanza at a time when

Well, colour me disappointed. I was among those – mugs, the uncharitable will be quick to call them – who imagined that Sir Keir Starmer represented the arrival of a welcome period of dull, unshowy decency at the top of our politics. I thought that whatever else he did – disappointed the left; enraged the right; made ‘hard decisions’ that nobody liked – it would be a long time before he was caught making chiselling excuses for accepting freebies, or rewarding donors with favours. His background as a lawyer, his punctilious attention to detail, that whole stiff air of priggishness he brought with him from the campaign trail to Downing Street: these may not have been attractive qualities, may not have been qualities that enhanced his personal charisma (as Boris’s

Another week, another accusation of sleaze in relation to the Labour party. After initially winning some plaudits over the summer recess for his handling of the riots, the new Prime Minister is now fighting fire on several fronts – from growing unrest over the Treasury decision to limit the winter fuel allowance to questions over the wisdom of the party’s approach to settling trade union pay disputes. But the most striking of the criticisms is the ongoing standards row. In opposition, Starmer regularly promised to ‘clean up’ politics and launch a ‘total crackdown on cronyism’. This pledge makes up a chunk of Labour’s election manifesto with the promise of a

Less than two months in, one aspect of Keir Starmer’s government is becoming clear. This administration is closer to the trade unions than any we have had in the past 45 years. It is not just that the government has ceded readily to wage demands from teachers (a 5.5 per cent rise this year), junior doctors (22 per cent over two years) and train drivers (15 per cent over three years) – it has done so without seeking any agreement to changes in working practices. Given the abysmal productivity record of the public sector in recent years, especially since the pandemic, this is a remarkable omission. The government’s failure to

During the election campaign, Keir Starmer confessed to taking Friday nights off. ‘I’ve been doing this for years – I will not do a work-related thing after six o’clock, pretty well come what may,’ he told a radio host. But one month into his premiership, and the Prime Minister is struggling even to take his pre-planned summer holiday. Claims that Labour’s decisive victory would make the UK a pocket of stability in a polarised world now look hubristic. Starmer leads a country that others such as Australia and Malaysia are warning their citizens not to travel to. Meanwhile he is engulfed in a very public Twitter spat with tech billionaire

Keir Starmer is advertising for someone to head his newly created Border Security Command. The salary is higher than his own: the person in charge of stopping the boats would earn between £140,000 and £200,000. According to the ad, the job of patrolling the English Channel can be done remotely from any one of 12 cities, including Edinburgh and Belfast. It will require coordination with the Home Office, parts of the navy and even MI5. Never mind that this goes on already, with no discernible effect. The key requirement for the job, it would seem, is to be the fall guy, someone ready to take the blame for a policy