Keir starmer

Keir Starmer – Ditched campaign promises ‘represented my values’ It was the Labour leader’s turn to face off against Laura Kuenssberg this morning. With Starmer currently in a commanding position, and the favourite to become the next prime minister, Kuenssberg looked back to the 2020 leadership contest to succeed Jeremy Corbyn. She asked him to explain why a significant number of campaign pledges had since fallen by the wayside: 16 is too young to change gender Kuenssberg also inquired as to Starmer’s position on the thorny issue of gender self-identification. The Scottish Parliament has voted to remove almost all barriers to a person seeking to change their gender and to

Speaking in Belfast this morning, Keir Starmer offered ‘political cover’ to the Prime Minister over any change to the Northern Ireland Protocol. A new deal with the EU is thought to be imminent – and Labour sees the chance for mischief. Starmer said it is ‘time to put Northern Ireland above a Brexit purity cult’ and that ‘we can find ways to remove the majority of checks’ through new solutions, adding that ‘there are legitimate problems with the Protocol and these must be recognised in any negotiations’. Starmer’s speech is well-timed His comments are a recognition of the Protocol’s relevance over the next few months. Both the EU and the

It’s the first Sunday broadcast round of 2023. Ahead of Rishi Sunak’s big grilling on the BBC, Sir Keir Starmer was up on Sky News, keen to depict Labour as the party of change. So it was jolly bad timing then that Sky chose this week to unveil their ‘Westminster Accounts’ project with Tortoise Media: a huge dossier on politicans’ outside earnings based in part on their declarations in the register of MPs’ interests. And while most of the top ten MPs with outside earnings are Conservative, one Labour member has been coining it in since the 2019 election. David Lammy, the Shadow Foreign Secretary and a key player in

Away from the gun-toting, field-romping antics of the dilettante Duke of Sussex, normal politics carries on as usual. And this weekend will see the first in-person Jewish Labour conference since 2018. Much has changed since then, when the party’s antisemitism crisis was at its height. Chair Mike Katz reflected in Jewish News how, back then, the group was ‘marginalised and ostracised by the Labour establishment under Jeremy Corbyn’ but that ‘the difference in our experience under Labour leader Keir Starmer is like night and day… he has acted to demonstrate zero tolerance of antisemitism.’ Indeed, Sir Keir has been vocal on the issue, apologising to the Jewish Chronicle for the

Oh dear. The stage was all set this morning for Sir Keir’s big speech, responding to yesterday’s Blairite tribute by Rishi Sunak. His sleeves were rolled up, the podium looked reassuringly solid and the factory backdrop was suitably metaphorical. But then came the technical issues: the curse of any aspirant Prime Minister hoping to show he has grip on detail. The microphone this morning unfortunately made Sir Keir sound like a Dalek hell-bent on regional devolution. His croaky voice eventually cut out completely, just ten minutes after he had begun, no doubt devastating his army of Keirleaders across the country. And just when he had got to the good bit

Liz Truss faced her first proper grilling at PMQs. Her debut, last month, was a softball affair but today Keir Starmer went in with both fists swinging. He asked her to endorse Jacob Rees-Mogg’s view that ‘turmoil in the markets has nothing to do with the Budget’. ‘What we have done,’ said Liz, pleasantly, ‘we have taken decisive action to make sure that people are not facing energy bills of £6,000 for two years.’ Sir Keir, already hopping mad, blasted her for ignoring his specific point. ‘Avoiding the question, ducking responsibility, lost in denial,’ he said viciously. He mentioned a young couple from Wolverhampton, Zac and Rebecca, who last week

In Singapore last week, I was asked: do ministers just come in, reach for the dumbest available policy and go ahead without asking anyone what the consequences will be? I explained the mindset. They do not ask because they do not want to hear the reply. In their minds, they are up against old thinking that just wants to keep Britain on the same declinist path – or ‘cycle of stagnation’ as Kwasi Kwarteng described the record of his Tory predecessors – and if you want to break new ground, don’t ask the people who will always say no. This is what Labour’s far-left Bennite wing think. Labour ministers didn’t

Today Kwasi Kwarteng attempted to calm concerns in his party over the fallout from the not-so-mini Budget – telling MPs: ‘We are one team and need to remain focused’.  That message is likely to face some resistance after the latest polling. Tonight the Times has published a new YouGov poll which gives Labour a 33-point lead. Yes, you read that right. It is thought to be the largest poll lead enjoyed by a political party since the late 1990s. It comes after a poll earlier this week gave Labour a 17-point lead. According to the survey, just 37 per cent of 2019 Conservative voters would stick with the party were an election

When Liz Truss scheduled her mini-Budget for the Friday before Labour conference, there was concern in Keir Starmer’s office. After months of meticulous planning, Starmer’s team feared the new Tory government would use their event to upstage his and distract from the party’s annual gathering in Liverpool. They were right to think that Kwasi Kwarteng’s statement would dominate the headlines; what they didn’t realise was that this would work entirely to their advantage. The market chaos provided the perfect backdrop to Labour conference: it reinforced a belief that, after 12 years in the cold, Labour is finally on the cusp of power. They can now present the Tories as the

Is nationalisation the vote-winner which Keir Starmer believes it to be? We will find out in due course, but my hunch is that the British public as a whole care a lot less about who owns the train carriages they ride in and the power stations which generate their electricity than Labour MPs do.  No one who remembers British Rail will be under any illusions that public ownership is a panacea What they care about rather more, surely, is whether their trains arrive on time and whether their lights stay on. No one who remembers British Rail will be under any illusions that public ownership is a panacea for a

Tonight’s YouGov poll in the Times is brilliant news for Keir Starmer ahead of his conference speech tomorrow. It has Labour 17 points ahead, its biggest lead since the company started polling in 2001. These numbers, following the market reaction to the statement, are an awful start To be sure, the numbers reflect more voter disappointment with the government than a sudden bout of Starmer mania. Some 68 per cent of voters said the government was managing the economy badly. Only 12 per cent thought the ‘mini-Budget’ is affordable. Just 19 per cent said it was fair, against 57 per cent who thought it was not fair. And 69 per

It’s day one of Labour conference and already there’s demands for Sir Keir Starmer to quit. With his party well ahead in the polls, you might have thought that would buy the Labour leader some respite. Not a bit of it, for over at The World Transformed festival – the breakaway Corbynite tribute act – Mick Lynch, the boss of the RMT union last night took aim at Starmer’s moderate leadership with the oratorical equivalent of a double-barreled shotgun. In a fiery 13-minute speech, the ‘people’s Mick’ told his audience at “The Working Class Strike Back” rally: The working class is back. We need to be in the community with

Keir Starmer tonight told the weekly parliamentary Labour party meeting that ‘we will never underestimate Liz Truss’. The Labour leader added that ‘she is a talented politician who has got to the top through hard work and determination’ and that ‘she will do whatever it takes to keep them in power’. He warned that ‘the polls might tighten and her plans might create some buzz’. It was a reminder to the party, which often struggles to accept female Tory leaders, not to fall into the trap of mocking Truss or feasting too much on the Tory civil war. How will Labour approach the new PM? Starmer will be asking her

With Truss and Sunak tearing chunks out of each other, inflation soaring and a cost-of-living crisis looming, you might have thought Labour would have the next election in the bag. But you can always trust the party to pull defeat from the jaws of victory, as the events of the past day have just shown once again. First, Sir Keir Starmer was found guilty of breaching the MPs’ code of conduct by failing to properly register more than £120,000 in land deals, corporate donations and Premier League tickets. He was forced to apologise to parliamentary ethics watchdog Kathryn Stone after the errors were uncovered. This was despite the Labour leader

Sam Tarry, who joined today’s picket line at Euston and gave various interviews from there, has been sacked from the Labour shadow transport team and the front bench. However, Tarry has not been sacked for being on the picket line, but for making unauthorised media appearances. Labour’s line is that this isn’t about appearing on a picket line. Members of the frontbench sign up to collective responsibility. That includes media appearances being approved and speaking to agreed frontbench positions.  This morning, Tarry implied that rail workers would not have gone on strike under a Labour government as they would have been offered a more generous pay deal. Given that Tarry

The last few months have been a godsend for the Labour party. Ten points ahead in the polls, with the Tories mired in the sleaze, its members now get to watch Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss slug it out all summer. Not for nothing then has Sir Keir Starmer sought to grasp the mantle of change and portray his party as the sensible, sober party of government, which will restore integrity to British politics. But is that really fair? Just this morning on Radio 4’s Today programme, Starmer was asked by Nick Robinson about the ‘ten pledges’ on which he ran to be Labour leader in April 2020. Robinson accused