Why Keir Starmer's hard to pin down:

 A Trotskyist who's capitalists' delight

Keir Starmer, the UK PM, a Trotskyist in his youth, has become capitalists' favourite now. As a lawyer, he helped over 400 people escape the gallows but defended police excesses too. The ambiguity in his personality might help him respond to changing situations and come up with pragmatic and radical solutions.


Keir Starmer is set to be the UK PM and his ambiguous personality might help him respond to changing situations and come up with pragmatic and radical solutions. (Image: AP)

Priyanjali Narayan
New Delhi,

UPDATED: Jul 6, 2024 1

In ShortKeir Starmer is the most working-class Labour Party leader of his generation
He was a Troskyist, who now supports wealth creation as part of Labour agenda
These shades in Starmer's personality show his evolution and flexibility


Keir Starmer becoming the Prime Minister of the UK was inevitable, if his ex-partner, Philipa Kauffman, is to be believed. "If you’d told me back then that Keir would be prime minister, it wouldn’t have surprised me one little bit. One, he is very capable. Two, he is utterly driven. Three, his values and principles are so important," Kauffman says in Starmer's biography by Tom Baldwin.

Capable, utterly driven and principled. Keir Starmer's win is no surprise for his ex-partner.

The biography was released in February, when it had become pretty evident that the Starmer-led Labour Party wasn't just on course to win the general election, but to sweep it.

On Friday, the Labour Party leader emerged victorious in the July 4 election, enabling Labour to form the government in the UK after 14 years. It was Starmer who steered Labour to victory by wooing and consolidating voter anger against the Conservatives.

"Starmer is peculiarly hard to pin down, especially for people who work in politics, because he resists being fitted into the clean lines within which politicians usually project themselves," wrote his biographer.

It is really "hard to pin down" who Starmer is. In Starmer's personality, we see many shades, even paradoxes.

He was the editor of Trotsky magazine in the UK who put "wealth creation" as an important agenda of the Labour Party in this election.

He is the most working-class leader of the Labour Party Britain has seen for years. But he is 'Sir', having been knighted by the British crown. He is a private man who has chosen public life to be in the political limelight.

Starmer is an anti-monarchist, who will now meet the King once a week. These paradoxes show his evolution as a political leader and a person over time. He adapts and is quick to understand and respond.

He was a human rights lawyer who became the adviser to the Northern Irish Policing Board, where he helped police officers justify their use of guns and plastic bullets.
'MY DAD WAS A TOOLMAKER, MY MOM A NURSE,' SAYS STARMER

Starmer is going to be the most working-class PM of the generation in the UK. He has defeated a man -- Rishi Sunak -- who some say was even richer than the royals.

Born to a toolmaker and a nurse, Starmer never had to think of or mention his origins till he entered politics.

"'My dad was a toolmaker and my mum was a nurse,' before adding – in words that these days might induce some form of aneurysm among those who have followed his interviews and speeches since – 'not everybody knows that and that’s because I don’t say it very often," wrote his biographer.

Starmer also spoke about unpaid bills and the phone being cut off. They could not eat pasta or travel abroad. His father felt "very disrespected" working as a factory worker, revealed Starmer.

But Starmer moved beyond his circumstances and was the first in the family to attend University of Leeds, and then do a year at Oxford.

Now, he is helping families get their first mortgage as his family's humble home "was everything to my family — it gave us stability, and I believe every family deserves the same".

He would go on to be a lawyer.

STARMER BECOMES A LAWYER, BUT WILL LAW BE ENOUGH?

He was a human rights lawyer at the famous Doughty Street Chambers. He fought death penalty cases for Commonwealth countries and was even part of a legal team that got the death sentences of 417 people removed.

He would never mention his working-class roots to win a case. In fact, he was never a "jury's lawyer". He built his case with facts. His style was considered "forensic" even when he represented the opposition in the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons.

He was a problem solver, not a poser.

"He’ll walk around a problem, look at it from every angle, almost touch and feel it before working out what to do. If we can’t abolish the death penalty altogether, he’ll find ways to engage with the prosecutors in that country or the government. There’s no point in telling these countries that capital punishment is barbaric just to get some cheap applause – where does that get you?"

He had pragmatic solutions to radical problems and was more interested in getting solutions than posturing, wrote his biographer.

This side of his personality is what will be of great use in 10 Downing Street. A London-based lawyer who worked with him said he was always "looking 10 miles down the road."

He became the top prosecutor of the country.

After being a human rights lawyer for decades, Starmer became in-charge of the Crown Prosecution Service in 2008 and was responsible for criminal prosecutions in England and Wales.

He saw the first British prosecution of al-Qaeda terrorists. He also came under scrutiny after he was, what some considered, harsh to rioters in London after the police shot dead a black man in 2011, Mark Duggan.

Finally, in 2014, Starmer was knighted and he became, 'Sir Keir'. But as Kauffman said, law was not enough for him.

KEIR STARMER ENTERS BRITISH POLITICS

Starmer finally entered electoral politics at the age of 52.

In 2015, he became the MP for the London district of Holborn and St Pancras in 2015, and was the “shadow minister” and dealt with Labour's position on Brexit.

Starmer had been against leaving the European Union but many Labour voters were in favour of it. Finally, the party could not reach a conclusion and asked for a second referendum.

This, along with other factors, led to the defeat of the Labour Party in 2019.

After the elections, Starmer became the party leader. He worked relentlessly and his fluidity as a leader made him cater to many. While several people say they do not know what he stands for, in reality, he stands for a few things.

“What Keir has done is taken all the left out of the Labour Party,” billionaire John Caudwell, told the BBC. “He’s come out with a brilliant set of values and principles and ways of growing Britain in complete alignment with my views as a commercial capitalist.”

Another strength of Starmer is that he hasn't been tied down to any of the party's factions and adapts to the situation.

“One of Keir’s greatest strengths is that he’s never been from or beholden to a particular faction of the Labour Party. I think that’s because – unlike almost every previous Labour leader – he didn’t spend his life in the Labour Party, and it isn’t his whole life, even now. It’s why he could win a leadership contest from the soft left, but now lead it from the centre-right," said Chris Ward, one of his principal advisers until 2021.

As for what he stands for?

“He believes in pragmatism, in developing policy by solving problems, not through grand theory. And he doesn’t come to the table with ideological presuppositions,” said Josh Simons, who headed the think tank, Labour Together.

As for immigration, Starmer has stated that they will use the money currently being used to send the immigrants to Rwanda to establish a new Border Security Command to tackle gangs operating via small boats across the border and other purposes.

He also stands for supporting his British Indian voters as he visited the Swaminarayan Temple in Kingsbury on June 28 to reiterate his commitment to building a “strategic partnership with India”.

"If we’re elected next week, we will strive to govern in the spirit of sewa to serve you and a world in need,” said Starmer, reiterating his promise of “absolutely no place for Hinduphobia in Britain”.

Though it is hard to pond down the real Starmer, the advantage of this flexibility of personality is that the new British Prime Minister can adapt to fast-changing situations and respond to them fast.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for TROTSKYISM 

RED TORY

Britain's Keir Starmer plots painstaking path to power

Wed, 4 October 2023 


Leader of the Labour Party Keir Starmer speaks at an event in London
By Elizabeth Piper

LONDON (Reuters) - On June 7, a group of star-struck British lawmakers posted selfies with Kiss bassist Gene Simmons when the glam rocker visited parliament. Hours later, those from the opposition Labour party were summoned by senior members in charge of discipline and ordered to delete the posts and apologise.

In 2004, Simmons had been heavily criticised for calling Islam a "vile culture" and the Labour MPs were sent on their way with warnings about any posts or comments that strayed from Labour's line ringing in their ears, two told Reuters.

Welcome to Keir Starmer's Labour Party.

After Labour's worst defeat for 84 years in 2019 under left-wing veteran Jeremy Corbyn, Starmer - a human rights lawyer who became Britain's top prosecutor before turning to politics in his 50s - has instilled a culture of discipline in what was a deeply fractured party.

Taking lessons from centre-left parties in Australia and Germany, he has imbued Labour with a cautious and methodical approach in the race to be prime minister, hoping competence and pragmatism rather than any overriding ideology will be enough to oust the Conservatives, in power since 2010.

Ten people who have worked, studied or socialised with Starmer, 61, told Reuters he would press on with his systematic approach if he becomes prime minister in an election expected next year. A vote must be held by the end of January, 2025.

"The next stage is where we've got to be even tougher, even more focused, even more disciplined," Starmer said about the run-up to the election in a conversation on stage with Tony Blair at the former Labour prime minister's institute in July.

While Starmer's approach has not won over all hearts and minds within Labour, the party has a healthy 15-20 point lead in the polls and he remains ahead of Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in the personality stakes.

"Thanks to Keir Starmer's leadership, voters see a changed Labour Party that is ready to change the country with a mission-driven government," a Labour spokesperson said when asked to comment for this story. "Everything we offer will be built on a bedrock of economic stability and a plan for growth."

'CORBYN WITHOUT THE MADNESS'

Named after the founder of the Labour Party, Keir Hardie, Starmer was brought up in a staunchly left-wing household.

As a barrister, he often defended underdogs and worked to get people off death row around the world. He became a Labour lawmaker in 2015 at the age of 52, a year after he received a knighthood for his services to law and criminal justice.

Five years on, he inherited the party after its worst election showing since 1935. Corbyn's plan to transform Britain with public sector pay rises, higher company taxes and sweeping nationalisation, fell flat with voters and the party was dogged by accusations of anti-Semitism and a fudged Brexit policy.

Starmer was seen "by many who supported Corbyn's policies as Corbyn without the madness", said his friend and Labour lord, Charlie Falconer.

According to Claire Ainsley, who was Starmer's executive director of policy in 2020-22 and now directs a new project on centre-left renewal at the U.S.-based Progressive Policy Institute, his advisers looked to Germany and Australia for lessons on how to turn things around.

Olaf Scholz was trailing badly in the polls when he was nominated as candidate for the centre-left SDP ahead of federal elections in 2021, after which he became chancellor. Australia's Anthony Albanese took over as leader of the Labor Party after it lost an election in 2019 and became prime minister in 2022.

Both changed their fortunes by focusing on a handful of commitments - Starmer has five missions - and running a disciplined campaign, Ainsley said. This was a strategy Starmer not only took on board, it also suited his talents.

Several of the people close to Starmer described him as more of a methodical lawyer than an ideological politician, and said this coloured his approach after becoming leader.

Falconer said Starmer embarked on a four-stage plan: first getting rid of alleged anti-Semitism within the party; putting the organisation back on its feet; bringing the best Labour lawmakers into his "shadow cabinet"; and finally adopting policies to address Britain's needs.

Ainsley said after tackling the factionalism, morale and finances of the party, Starmer's plan was then to argue why the Conservative government was not fit to govern and finally present his "positive offer" to the public.

"He has done it systematically always with an eye to the strategic, and doing it with enormous self-discipline," Falconer said.

STEP BY STEP

It's a strategy Starmer learnt when he became Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) - essentially Britain's top prosecutor - in 2008, the people close to him said.

Then, he set goals for each of the years he had in front of him. The first involved travelling around the country to see how the different offices operated, then came reform, implementation and finally to prepare for his successor.

That was his instinct too when he became Labour leader but his plans were somewhat thwarted by COVID: his victory speech was delivered virtually from his living room.

Starmer later still went on his tour though, largely under the radar of television cameras, and would purposely talk to people who did not agree with Labour policies, Ainsley said.

"Corbyn would like to go to gatherings of the faithful. Keir does the opposite," she told Reuters.

Critics, especially those on the left of the party, complain this shows Starmer relies more on focus groups than ideology - and one shadow minister said they wondered whether he was bold enough to convince Britons to vote Labour.

Supporters say, however, it can only be an asset, describing him as someone of the left, as well as a pragmatist who assesses situations and draws conclusions.

For example, those on the left say Starmer has reneged on his leadership campaign pledges to uphold some of Corbyn's 2019 manifesto, such as the renationalisation of public utilities.

But Ainsley said he would have looked at the issue and decided "he is not convinced that the case for re-nationalisation in all cases at this particular point is there".

One person who worked with Starmer when he was advising the Policing Board to monitor the Police Service of Northern Ireland's compliance with the Human Rights Act said: "Everything he does, it's because he's thought carefully about what's going to get him to where he needs to be."

"He thinks about the best way to take people with him, or to take the people with him he needs to take with him."

'CHAMPION OF THE UNDERDOG'

It was while he was DPP that Starmer realised he had to become engaged in politics - and get into government - if he wanted to bring about real change, Falconer said.

But even after entering parliament, supporters and critics alike said he was still more of a lawyer than politician.

"As a lawyer you don't establish a coherent political position," said Falconer. "You have causes and his causes tended to be on the left. He was a real champion of the underdog and he was completely loyal to a series of causes."

Starmer often took on pro bono legal work, such as getting convicts off death row in the Caribbean. Working for free, he also played a key role in helping overturn the mandatory death penalty in Uganda, saving the lives of 417 people.

And working alongside lawyer Mark Stephens, they famously won an appeal in the European Court of Human Rights against the British government over the "McLibel" trial involving two environmentalists and fast-food chain McDonalds.

Now, his cause is getting Labour into power - and his pragmatism runs through his policy commitments.

With Britain's coffers all but empty, Starmer has issued a strong message to his top team: don't make any promises the party cannot prove can be funded.

Instead, they need to come up with ideas to make his five missions - economic growth, net zero, the health service, crime and education - work without increasing taxes.

That has led to courting business, as Blair did before the first of his three election victories in 1997.

Starmer's overreaching goal is to promote economic growth to try to increase tax receipts so Labour can help a public sector he says has been starved by years of Conservative austerity.

While cosying up to business is unpopular with the Labour left, people close to Starmer say even when he was a ring leader on the top deck of the bus to school, leading the laughter with other teenagers, there was a steeliness as well.

"He's clearly not worried about taking difficult decisions," said Andrew Cooper, who went to Reigate Grammar school near London with Starmer and was a former adviser to Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.

Cooper said Starmer was famed at school, and often mocked, for his stubborn obsession with British rock band Status Quo - and never turned to the trendier sounds of new wave or punk.

"This is not somebody who craves to be liked."

(Editing by David Clarke)

Safety first? Labour seeks to maintain poll lead at annual meet


Peter HUTCHISON
Wed, 4 October 2023 

Labour Party leader Keir Starmer announced his 'five missions' earlier this year (ANDY BUCHANAN)

Britain's Labour opposition gathers this weekend for its annual conference, with the centre-left party currently on course to return to power in a general election expected next year.

Labour, led by Keir Starmer, goes into the four-day event -- which starts on Sunday in Liverpool, northwest England -- well ahead of the governing Conservatives in opinion polls.

After this week's chaotic Tory conference, which hampered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's bid to kick-start a resurgence of his beleaguered party, experts say the primary objective of Labour's meet is a simple one: do nothing that jeopardises its lead.

"The main thing will be don't cock up. No hostages to fortune, no signs of dissension," political scientist Anand Menon told AFP.

Labour last held the keys to 10 Downing Street in 2010 and is readying itself to govern again following a vote that must be held by January 2025 at the latest.

Starmer, 61, has revived the fortunes of a party that suffered a landslide defeat to the Conservatives at the last election in 2019 under former far-left leader Jeremy Corbyn, by pulling it back to the centre ground.

A recent European trip, including a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron, was seen by many as Starmer projecting himself as a prime minister-in-waiting.

Labour has enjoyed double-digit poll leads for months, with Britain locked in a cost-of-living crisis and plagued by strikes, and with Tory infighting leading to three prime ministers in little over a year.

Recent surveys, though, have showed the gap narrowing after the announcement of populist policies by Sunak that attempt to draw clear dividing lines between the Tories and their opponents.

Starmer, a former chief state prosecutor, is regularly accused of being too cautious, and observers are keen to see whether he adopts a bolder stance in Liverpool.

"The only interesting thing I think will be the degree to which Starmer feels pressured into trying to be a bit more assertive in terms of spelling out a vision," Menon said.

Starmer has dropped several pledges made during his successful 2020 leadership bid, including plans to scrap university tuition fees, citing the economic climate.

Labour has also backed away from tax increases, allowing Conservatives to accuse Starmer of flip-flopping on several issues.

- Symbolic policies? -

Starmer has ruled out taking Britain back into the European Union but has pledged to seek "a much better deal for the UK" with the bloc. The post-Brexit Trade and Cooperation agreement struck by former premier Boris Johnson is due for review in 2025.

In July, he laid out his party's "five missions for a better Britain" that will form the backbone of its election manifesto.

They include making Britain a green energy superpower and building a national health service "fit for the future".

Political experts expect the Labour leader to put more flesh on the bones of these policies when he speaks at the conference Tuesday, which could be the last annual gathering of the party before voters go to the polls.

"One would expect one or two quite symbolic policies from the conference, things to associate Starmer with over the next few months. I think that will be important," Karl Pike at Queen Mary University of London told AFP.

But with opinion polls suggesting that only Labour can blow the party's chances now, Starmer may feel it is wiser to keep his cards close to his chest until nearer the election, which experts have speculated could occur in the spring or autumn of 2024.

Economic constraints mean Labour may also be reluctant to commit to major spending pledges they might not be able to meet if elected.

Starmer will also have to decide whether to engage with the Tories over so-called "culture wars" on immigration and gender rights, which interior minister Suella Braverman ramped up with her conference speech on Tuesday.

"The question for him is how safety first is he going to be, at the conference and over the next few months," said Pike.

"How much is it going to be about what Labour wants to do for the country? And how much is it going to be about just attacking the Conservatives?"

pdh/phz/js

TORY WIPE OUT

Keir Starmer pledges 'national renewal' after Labour wins UK election

Prime Minister-elect Keir Starmer pledged Friday to start a period of "national renewal" in the UK after his opposition Labour party crossing the 326-seat threshold for a working majority in the House of Commons, defeating the ruling Conservatives in the general election.


Issued on: 04/07/2024 -

06:41

Britain's Labour party leader Keir Starmer delivers a speech during a victory rally at the Tate Modern in London early on July 5, 2024. © Justin Tallis, AFP

Keir Starmer on Friday will become Britain's new prime minister, as his centre-left opposition Labour Party swept to a landslide general election victory, ending 14 years of right-wing Conservative rule.

"The Labour Party has won this general election, and I have called Sir Keir Starmer to congratulate him on his victory," a sombre-looking Rishi Sunak said after he was re-elected to his seat.

"Today, power will change hands in a peaceful and orderly manner with goodwill on all sides," the Tory leader added, calling the results "sobering" and saying he took responsibility for the defeat.

At a triumphant party rally in central London, Starmer, 61, told cheering activists that "change begins here" and promised a "decade of national renewal", putting "country first, party second".

But he cautioned that change would not come overnight, even as Labour snatched a swathe of Tory seats around the country, including from at least eight Cabinet members.

Defence Secretary Grant Shapps was the highest-profile scalp of the night so far, with other big names, including senior minister Penny Mordaunt and leading Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg also defeated.

Finance minister Jeremy Hunt hung on to remain an MP, but only by 891 votes.

'Keir we go'

Labour raced past the 326 seats needed to secure an overall majority in the 650-seat parliament at 0400 GMT, with the final result expected later on Friday morning.

An exit poll for UK broadcasters published after polls closed at 2100 GMT on Thursday put Labour on course for a return to power for the first time since 2010, with 410 seats and a 170-seat majority.

The Tories would only get 131 seats in the House of Commons – a record low – with the right-wing vote apparently spliced by Nigel Farage's anti-immigration Reform UK party, which could bag 13 seats.

In another boost for the centrists, the smaller opposition Liberal Democrats would get 61 seats, ousting the Scottish National Party on 10 as the third-biggest party.

The projected overall result bucks a rightward trend among Britain's closest Western allies, with the far right in France eyeing power and Donald Trump looking set for a return in the United States.

British newspapers all focused on Labour's impending return to power for the first time since Gordon Brown was ousted by David Cameron in 2010.

"Keir We Go," headlined the Labour-supporting Daily Mirror. "Britain sees red," said The Sun, the influential Rupert Murdoch tabloid, which swung behind Labour for the first time since 2005.

Tory future

Sunak will tender his resignation to head of state King Charles III, with the monarch then asking Starmer, as the leader of the largest party in parliament, to form a government.

The Tories worst previous election result is 156 seats in 1906. Former leader William Hague told Times Radio the projections would be "a catastrophic result in historic terms".

But Tim Bale, politics professor at Queen Mary, University of London, said it was "not as catastrophic as some were predicting" and the Tories would now need to decide how best to fight back.

Right-wing former interior minister Suella Braverman and Mordaunt, who was leader of the House of Commons, both said the Tories failed because they had not listened to the British people.

But Brexit champion Farage, who finally succeeded in becoming an MP at the eighth time of asking, has made no secret of his aim to take over the party.

"There is a massive gap on the centre-right of British politics and my job is to fill it," he said after a comfortable win in Clacton, eastern England.
To-do list

Labour's resurgence is a stunning turnaround from five years ago, when hard-left former leader Jeremy Corbyn took the party to its worst defeat since 1935 in an election dominated by Brexit.

Starmer took over in early 2020 and set about moving the party back to the centre, making it a more electable proposition and purging infighting and anti-Semitism that lost it support.

Opinion polls have put Labour consistently 20 points ahead of the Tories for almost the past two years, giving an air of inevitability about a Labour win – the first since Tony Blair in 2005.

Starmer is facing a daunting to-do list, with economic growth anaemic, public services overstretched and underfunded due to swingeing cuts, and households squeezed financially.

He has also promised a return of political integrity, after a chaotic period of five Tory prime ministers, including three in four months, scandal and sleaze.

(AFP)

Newly-elected PM Keir Starmer poised to bring a low profile to 10 Downing Street

The Labour Party won a landslide victory in the UK general election on Thursday, making Keir Starmer the country’s first Labour prime minister in 14 years. Starmer's victory caps a remarkable political rise for the former human rights lawyer and chief prosecutor, first elected an MP in 2015.


Issued on: 05/07/2024 -

Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer delivers a speech on Labour's energy policy, at the Greenock Arts Centre, northwest of Glasgow on May 31, 2024. 

© Andy Buchanan, AFP

01:37

By: Cyrielle CABOT|

Video by: Charlotte HUGHES

Always neat in appearance, with his well-combed greying hair, stern expression and dispassionate voice, 61-year-old Starmer is an outlier in UK politics compared to his peers and Conservative predecessors.

Far removed from the antics of the likes of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage – whose careers have been peppered with controversy and scandal – the Labour Party leader stands out for his ability to keep a low profile.

So much so, in fact, that little is known about 10 Downing Street’s new occupant.
A knight with humble origins

Sir Keir – he rarely uses the honorific title himself – was awarded a knighthood in 2014 for his services to “law and criminal justice”.

Starmer comes from a modest background. Born to blue-collar parents in 1962, Starmer was named after Keir Hardie, founder of the Labour Party of which his parents were staunch supporters, and grew up in a small town in Surrey.

“My dad was a toolmaker and worked in a factory all his life, and my mum was a nurse,” Starmer often noted in speeches.

The first among four siblings to receive higher education, Starmer attended the University of Leeds from where he graduated with honours and a law degree before heading to Oxford for postgraduate studies.


Starmer then became a barrister in 1987, specialising in human rights law and represented death row inmates in Africa and the Caribbean.

Often providing legal advice for free, Starmer also worked on several high profile cases including the defence of environmental activists against McDonald’s and Shell.

Nicknamed “lefty lawyer” by opponents, Starmer took legal action against human rights violations in the context of the Northern Ireland conflict and helped set up the Northern Ireland Police Board following the Good Friday agreement that ended decades of violent conflict in Northern Ireland.

In 2008, Starmer was appointed Director of Public Prosecutions where he oversaw the prosecution of MPs charged with embezzlement and journalists accused of phone hacking.
A late start in politics

Starmer's entry into politics came fairly late in life, at the age of 52.

He was first elected to parliament in 2015, serving as the member for his London constituency where he lived with his wife and their two children.

Quickly climbing the ranks of the Labour Party, Starmer soon became shadow Home Office minister before quitting the role in protest of former party head Jeremy Corbyn’s lack of leadership during the Brexit campaign.

Starmer went on to become the party’s spokesman on Brexit-related issues and eventually took over the party’s leadership when Corbyn stood down following Labour’s crushing defeat in the 2019 general elections against Boris Johnson’s Conservatives.

It was from that point on that Starmer firmly established himself as a politician, said Thibaud Harrois, lecturer in contemporary British civilisation at Sorbonne-Nouvelle University.

"Keir Starmer made it his mission to turn the page on Jeremy Corbyn," Harrois said, adding that “he started by dismissing all those accused of anti-Semitism from within the party, including Jeremy Corbyn himself."

In May, Starmer expelled Corbyn from the party after suspending him over a row on anti-Semitism.

Intent on winning the popular vote, Starmer also started aligning Labour’s policies with the centre by preventing left-wing candidates from standing for the party.

Recentering Labour

"He really reshaped the then very left-leaning Labour Party in an attempt to appeal to a more centrist, even centre-right electorate," Harrois said.

Politically, Starmer favours economic interventionism and social policies, while remaining firm on immigration and security, he said.

"But he always remains measured, refusing to make big promises and constantly reminds people that the state coffers are empty", he added.

Harrois also highlighted Starmer’s “cautious” posture, often denounced by Tories and the hard left as “lacking in courage” and "prevents people from seeing his true position".

While he has promised to repeal laws restricting the right to strike, he has backpeddled on his proposal to increase welfare benefits.

Starmer also watered down what was seen as his flagship policy: investing up to 28 billion pounds (€33 billion) a year in renewable energies.

Despite attracting criticism from both ends of the political spectrum for his ideas, Starmer sought to court the public’s favour by calling attention to his modest upbringing.

"Unlike Tony Blair, for example, Keir Starmer is well aware that he is not charismatic," said Harrois. "By emphasising his background, he plays on the image of a man who is above all serious, straightforward and methodical," he said, adding that Starmer’s cultivated image has become an asset "after years of scandals" in UK politics.

But Starmer’s arrival at number 10 is mostly “contextual", driven by "the population's desire for change", Harrois said.

"In the current political landscape and in this particular context, he has succeeded in establishing himself as the serious alternative", he said.

A position perfectly illustrated by Starmer’s campaign slogan, chanted at every meeting: "It's time for change".

This paper is adapted from the original in French.

KEIR STAMERS VICTORY SPEECH

 

Angela Rayner: Life and career of Labour's soon-to-be Deputy Prime Minister after General Election win

By Sofia Fedeczko
Published 5th Jul 2024

By now, almost everyone in the country knows who Angela Rayner is.

After the General Election, which resulted in a landslide victory for Labour and the first change of government in 15 years, the Ashton-under-Lyne MP is now one of the most powerful people in the country.

As Angela and her Labour colleagues gear themselves up for the first crucial 100 days in power, here is everything you need to know about the life and career so far of the UK’s soon-to-be Deputy Prime Minister.

Angela Rayner’s life outside of politics

Unlike many of her colleagues in Westminster, Angela Rayner’s life started out on a council estate. Angela was many things before politics, including teenage mother, care worker and union official.

In interviews throughout her career, Angela has spoken openly about her difficult childhood, growing up in poverty and having to look after her mother, who had bi-polar and depression. She has two siblings.

Deputy leader and Ashton MP Angela Rayner | Getty Images

She attended Avondale School, but left at 16 with no qualifications and pregnant with her first child Ryan. She then returned to college part-time, studying social care and British Sign Language.

Angela went on to work as a carer looking after the elderly for Stockport Council for several years, eventually being elected as a union representative. She rose through the UNISON ranks, becoming the union’s highest elected official in the North West.

In 2010, she married Mark Rayner, a fellow Unison official. Angela had two more sons with Mark – Charlie, who was born 23 weeks premature, and Jimmy. The couple split in 2020 but have remained friends. Angela became a grandmother in 2017, aged 37, when her son Ryan welcomed a baby daughter.

Angela Rayner also had a relationship with fellow Labour MP and former shadow transport minister Sam Tarry. He was sacked from his ministerial role in 2022 after joining the picket line alongside striking rail workers. They split in 2023.

Scottish Labour Leader Anas Sarwar and Deputy Labour Party Leader Angela Rayner speak at a campaign event in Hamilton on Friday. Picture: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Angela Rayner’s life in politics

Having risen the union ranks, Angela was selected to be a prospective party candidate for Labour in 2014 and then elected to parliament as the MP for Ashton-Under-Lyne in 2015. She was the constituency’s first female MP in its 180-year history.

After just one year in Westminster, Angela was selected for the front bench to serve as the Shadow Minister for Education under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. She was re-elected as MP in the 2017 General Election with a much higher share of the votes at 60.4%, and again in the 2019 snap general election with 48.1%.

She was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour party in 2020 when Keir Starmer became leader of the party. However, she was sacked as Party Chair following a historic Labour loss to the Conservatives in the Hartlepool by-election in 2021. She became Shadow Deputy Prime Minister during a reshuffle in 2023, taking over from Harriet Harmen. She was also appointed Shadow Secretary for Levelling Up. Politically, Angela Rayner has described herself as a socialist.

General Election 2024: 'Putting Tameside on the map' - Angela Rayner retains her seat in Ashton-under-Lyne

Tameside General Election results: Angela Rayner re-elected in Ashton-under-Lyne as Labour storm to landslide

Angela Rayner’s time in politics has not been without controversy. In 2021, she publicly apologised to the Conservative party for calling its members “scum” during the Labour party conference.

In 2022, she hit out at a Daily Mail article that claimed she was intentionally crossing and uncrossing her legs in Parliament as a part of a “Basic Instinct” style ploy to distract then Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Most recently, in March 2024, Angela Rayner was accused of not paying the capital gains tax on the sale of her Stockport council house in 2015. She was cleared in May following an investigation by Greater Manchester Police, who said that no further action was needed.

RIGHT TURN
Britain's Labour turns page on socialism with Starmer as new leader



Profile of Keir Starmer, the new leader of the British Labour Party 

(AFP Photo/Gillian HANDYSIDE)

By Kate Holton, Reuters•April 4, 2020

LONDON (Reuters) - Keir Starmer was elected as the leader of Britain's main opposition Labour Party on Saturday, pledging to bring an end to years of bitter infighting and to work with the government to contain the raging coronavirus pandemic.

Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions who was known for a forensic attention to detail when opposing the country's exit from the European Union, won with 56% of the vote.

The comprehensive defeat of an ally of the outgoing leader Jeremy Corbyn, and the election of Angela Rayner as Starmer's deputy, heralds the end of the party leadership's embrace of a radical socialism that was crushed in the December election.

Starmer, who takes over immediately, said he would work constructively with government when it was the right thing to do, while testing Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson's arguments and challenging the failures.

"Our purpose when we do that is the same as the government's, to save lives," he said in a statement that was pre-recorded due to the pandemic.

Starmer added that once the country emerges on the other side, once the hospital wards have emptied and the threat subsided, it would need to build a fairer society, where key workers on the front line receive decent salaries and better chances in life.

"In their courage and their sacrifice and their bravery, we can see a better future. This crisis has brought out the resilience and human spirit in all of us," he said.

Johnson said on Twitter he had congratulated Starmer and the two agreed on the importance of working together.

The party of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown endured its worst election performance since 1935 in December, when infighting over strategy, a confused policy over Brexit and allegations of unchecked anti-Semitism turned traditional voters away.

Starmer pushed for a second Brexit referendum but said the election result had “blown away” that argument.

Corbyn ally Rebecca Long-Bailey came second in the party's vote with 28% and Lisa Nandy was third with 16%.

Many centrist Labour politicians celebrated the result as a sign that the government would finally face proper scrutiny.

"A fresh Labour leader will challenge the Tories where necessary and give the party the chance to renew itself in time for the next election," Alf Dubs, an opposition Labour lord who fled to Britain as a child to escape the Nazis, told Reuters.

Starmer acknowledged the scale of the task ahead.

Well ahead in opinion polls, Johnson's Conservatives have also occupied much of traditional Labour territory, with the coronavirus crisis prompting the ruling party to deliver unprecedented state support to workers and businesses.

"This is my pledge to the British people. I will do my utmost to guide us through these difficult times, to serve all of our communities and to strive for the good of our country," Starmer said.

"I will lead this great party into a new era, with confidence and with hope."

(Additional reporting by Elizabeth Piper; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Frances Kerry)

Keir Starmer elected new UK Labour leader: party

Phil HAZLEWOOD, AFP•April 4, 2020


The three Labour leadership candidates 

(L-R) Lisa Nandy, Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey

 (AFP Photo/Daniel LEAL-OLIVAS, Isabel INFANTES, Leon NEAL)

Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader in 2015
 (AFP Photo/ISABEL INFANTES)

The announcement of the new UK Labour Party leader 
was a low key affair in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic
 (AFP Photo/Paul ELLIS )

London (AFP) - Britain's main opposition Labour party on Saturday announced that Keir Starmer had been elected as its new leader, replacing Jeremy Corbyn who resigned after its crushing December election defeat.

The 57-year-old former chief state prosecutor defeated Corbyn loyalist Rebecca Long-Bailey and backbencher Lisa Nandy for the top job.

Angela Rayner becomes the new deputy leader, Labour announced on Twitter, after it was forced to cancel a special conference because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Starmer, who was Labour's Brexit spokesman, thanked supporters and his opponents in the three-month campaign that followed Corbyn's election defeat to Boris Johnson's Conservatives.

He called it "the honour and privilege" of his life and vowed to "engage constructively" with Johnson's government, particularly in the fight-back against COVID-19.

But he also vowed to reunite the party, after deep divisions caused by veteran socialist Corbyn's hard-left ideals that clashed with advocates of a more centrist approach, and Brexit.
And he immediately addressed the issue of anti-Semitism that Corbyn was accused of failing to tackle, which tarnished the party's reputation and caused Jewish members to leave in droves.

"Anti-Semitism has been a stain on our party. I have seen the grief that it's brought to so many Jewish communities," Starmer said. "On behalf of the Labour Party, I am sorry.

"And I will tear out this poison by its roots and judge success by the return of Jewish members and those who felt that they could no longer support us."

Starmer, who won 56.2 percent of the vote of more than 500,000 Labour members, acknowledged the party had "a mountain to climb", after four straight general election defeats.

But he vowed: "We will climb it."


Keir Starmer vowed to address the issue of antiSemitism in the party
 (AFP Photo/Paul ELLIS)

- 'Bad blood and mistrust' -

Labour grew out of the trade union movement but moved to the political centre under former prime minister Tony Blair, who was in office between 1997 and 2007.

Corbyn spent a lifetime on the sidelines because of his left-wing views, and his election as leader in 2015, on the back of a huge surge in party membership, was a shock.

MPs and party members have been locked in an ideological battle ever since.

"There's really a lot of bad blood and mistrust," said Steven Fielding, a political expert at the University of Nottingham.

"The first challenge (of the new leader) will be to put a team together that at least looks like it has the ability to unify the party."

Winning back voters who defected to the Conservatives is also top of Starmer's "to do" list if Labour has any hope of victory at the next election, currently scheduled for 2024.

Brexit was a toxic issue for the party, torn between eurosceptic supporters in many northern English towns and pro-EU voters in the big cities such as London.

Starmer was opposed to Brexit and played a key role in moving Labour to support a second referendum on leaving the European Union.

However, voters were not convinced and Johnson took Britain out of the bloc on January 31.

- Coronavirus challenge -

The coronavirus outbreak has brought a more immediate challenge.

Johnson's government has imposed draconian curbs on public movement to try to stop the spread -- measures backed by Labour, although it successfully pressed for more parliamentary scrutiny of new police powers.

The Conservatives have also promised eye-watering sums to keep businesses and individuals afloat, wading into traditional Labour territory.

In response, Johnson's popularity ratings have shot up.

A YouGov survey last week found that 55 percent of the public had a favourable opinion of him, up from 43 percent a week earlier.

Some 72 percent thought the government was doing well -- including a majority of Labour voters.

Ministers have been on the back foot in recent days, however, over the lack of testing for coronavirus and the protection equipment for healthcare staff.

Labour has been pressing the issues, and Starmer said this would continue.

"My instinct will be to be constructive but to ask the difficult questions," he told the Guardian podcast this week.

Sir Keir Starmer Is U.K. Labour’s Knight in Shining Armor

Olivia Konotey-Ahulu,Bloomberg•April 4, 2020


(Bloomberg) --

After a decade in the political wasteland, members of Britain’s main opposition Labour Party have chosen a moderate, un-flashy lawyer as their new leader. Their hope is that turning the page on the socialist radical Jeremy Corbyn, who was resoundingly rejected by voters last year, will see them re-take power.

Keir Starmer, 57, offers dry competence and seriousness after a turbulent five years under the firebrand Corbyn. At a time when the U.K. is grappling with the global coronavirus crisis and its own exit from the European Union, a steady hand could prove popular.

“Maybe being boringly competent is a magical thing -- because we haven’t got many boringly competent politicians at the moment, particularly in government,” said Steven Fielding, a professor at Nottingham University and historian of the Labour party. “People just flock to him like a safety raft from a sinking ship.”

Starmer faces one urgent decision before he embarks on his long-term mission. First he must decide how far he should support Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s strategy for countering the pandemic and how stridently he should speak out against the government’s mistakes. There has been speculation that he could even join a government of national unity to see the country through the crisis, as happened in World War II.

Battered

In the years ahead, Starmer’s defining task will be to revive a battered opposition party, broken by its worst election defeat in 80 years, and then persuade Britain’s 47 million voters that he is the prime minister the country needs to put itself back together.

Starmer was born in 1962 in south London to a nurse and a toolmaker. He was the first member of his family to go to an academically selective grammar school. After studying at the universities of Leeds and Oxford he began the 30-year campaigning career in human rights law that would set him up for front-line politics.

He represented peace activists and environmental campaigners, and led a legal challenge against the sinking of an oil rig.

Gavin Millar, a top lawyer who interviewed the young Starmer for a junior position in the late 80s, remembers him as “very radical” with strong views about the law. In a legal world of high intellects, Starmer’s first-rate brain stood out, but so too did his commitment to the protesters and activists fighting the powerful during Margaret Thatcher’s decade of Tory rule.

The two shared an office, where Starmer, who loved indie-pop bands such as The Smiths, was known for working long hours. “I got a lot of two-in-the-morning emails from him,” Millar said.

Passion

During the course of Starmer’s legal career, Millar saw him become more measured and less “strident” in his outlook. But, fundamentally, his commitment to social justice remains as strong as ever, Millar said. “I don’t think the passion has changed at all – that is a constant in Keir.”

In 2008, Starmer took on one of the biggest jobs in the justice system, director of public prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service. Perhaps his biggest case was overseeing the highly controversial and ultimately successful retrial of two men for the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in 1993.

After being given a knighthood -- he now prefers not to use the title “Sir” -- he was elected as Labour member of Parliament for a London district in 2015. Brexit gave Starmer his big chance in politics.

As Labour’s Brexit spokesman, he was constantly appearing in the House of Commons, picking apart Theresa May’s ill-fated attempt to negotiate a divorce deal with the European Union, and working with like minded opponents of a no-deal split across party lines.

Yet in the 2019 election campaign the Brexit policy he helped Labour to devise was partly responsible for the party’s dire result. He wanted a second referendum that would give the electorate the chance to vote to stay in the EU, but Corbyn declared that Labour would remain “neutral” and would not back either the leave or remain side. Voters wanted to move on and Johnson won with his pledge to “get Brexit done.”

Sea Change

Labour’s 2019 defeat was also a rejection of Corbyn, whose unpopular leadership turned voters off.

Starmer was the favorite to succeed Corbyn from the start, as Labour members apparently decided they needed to put their hopes of winning ahead of any emotioal attachment to the former leader’s old fashioned leftwing ideals.

“It feels to me like a real sea change in the party, a new seriousness,” said Labour MP Stephen Timms, who hosted a phone canvassing event for Starmer in his constituency. “I think Keir is going to be a serious contender for the leadership of the country.”

While the face is different, many of Starmer’s policy pledges were first adopted under Corbyn. They include putting up income tax on top earners and bringing rail, mail, energy and water into common ownership. Starmer has promised to oppose austerity and introduce a compassionate migration system with free movment across the EU.

Labour has now lost four elections in a row and with Johnson sitting on a comfortable 80-seat majority in Parliament, the odds favor a fifth defeat in 2024. Yet the coronavirus pandemic seems certain to reshape the country and shake up politics across the world. There is a chance that when the crisis eventually ends and the next election comes, the country will want new leadership.

“We can only win if we are united and relentlessly focused on the future,” Starmer said in his first rally of the leadership election campaign on Feb. 16. He made it sound easy. In reality, the task he faces is still huge.

The Labour Party remains dysfunctional and unpopular and that must change if it is to defeat Johnson’s Tories, said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University in London. “There’s clearly a case for some pretty brutal surgery, to the point of actual amputation,” said Bale. “It’s whether he’s prepared to actually wield not only the scalpel but the bone saw.”

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.

Keir Starmer declares ‘new era’ for Labour after landslide victory in leadership contest

Ashley Cowburn,The Independent•April 4, 2020

PA

Keir Starmer has declared a "new era" for Labour as he was elected the party's new leader after a landslide victory in the three-month contest to replace Jeremy Corbyn.

Sir Keir, who today becomes Labour’s 19th leader in its 120-year history, defeated the left-wing candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey, the shadow business secretary, and the Wigan MP Lisa Nandy for the top job.

Securing a convincing majority across all sections of Labour’s electorate – including registered supporters, members and affiliates – and a 56.2 per cent of the vote share overall, he said it was the “honour and privilege of my life” to be elected as the party’s leader.

“I will lead this great party into a new era,” he insisted. “With confidence and hope, so that when the time comes, we can serve our country again – in government.”

Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner was also announced as the party’s new deputy leader, seeing off competition from Richard Burgon, Dawn Butler, Rosena Allin-Khan and Ian Murray, with 52.6 per cent of the vote share.

It comes as the veteran left-winger Mr Corbyn announced he was stepping aside from the role – after a four and a half years – in the wake of the party’s worst result in terms of parliamentary seats at a general election since 1935.

Sir Keir, the 57-year-old shadow Brexit secretary, has led the race from the start, winning the backing of 89 members of the parliamentary part in the first round of the contest, before securing the support of more than a dozen affiliated organisations in the second stage.

Ballot papers were sent out in late February to the party’s half a million members, affiliated trade unions and 14,700 “registered supporters” who each paid £25 to take part on a one-off basis.

Labour announced the results of the contest online at 10.45am after the party was forced to cancel a planned special members’ conference in central London due to the coronavirus pandemic. Candidates had effectively suspended their campaigns last month as the infections of covid-19 started to escalate in the UK.

Coinciding with Mr Corbyn’s resignation, Boris Johnson also wrote to the leaders of opposition parties at Westminster, inviting them to a briefing of senior government advisers next week as he insisted “we have a duty to work together at this moment of the national unity”.

He added: “I want to listen to your views and update you on the measures we have taken so far, such as rapidly expanding testing and providing economic support to businesses and individuals across the country.”

Remarking on his clear victory in the contest, Sir Keir said the coronavirus crisis had brought normal life to halt in the UK. "People are frightened by the strangeness, anxious about what will happen next. And we have to remember that every number is a family shaken to its foundation,” he said.

He added: “Our willingness to come together like this as a nation has been lying dormant for too long. When millions of us stepped out onto our doorsteps to applaud the carers visibly moved there was hope of a better future. In times like this, we need good government, a government that saves lives and protects our country.

"It's a huge responsibility and whether we voted for this government or not, we all rely on it to get this right. That's why in the national interest the Labour Party will play its full part.

"Under my leadership we will engage constructively with the government, not opposition for opposition's sake. Not scoring party political points or making impossible demands. But with the courage to support where that's the right thing to do.

"But we will test the arguments that are put forward. We will shine a torch on critical issues and where we see mistakes or faltering government or things not happening as quickly as they should we'll challenge that and call that out.”

(Getty Images)

Sir Keir also said he was “sorry” on behalf of the Labour Party for the “stain” that antisemitism had brought on the party in recent years after allegations that have plagued the party under Mr Corbyn’s leadership. “I will tear out this poison by its roots and judge success by the return of Jewish members and those who felt that they could no longer support us,” he added.

In a statements, defeated candidate Ms Long-Bailey said Sir Keir will be a “brilliant prime minister and I can’t wait to see him in Number 10”, adding: “I will do all I can to make that a reality and to ensure the Labour Party gets into government with a transformative agenda at the next election.”

The left-wing group Momentum – set up to support Mr Corbyn’s radical, left-wing policy agenda in 2015 – said the organisation looks forward to working with him, but also pledged to hold him to account in the coming months and years.

“His mandate is to build on Jeremy’s transformative vision, and this means appointing a broad shadow cabinet who believe in the policies and will work with members to make them a reality,” they added. “In this new era Momentum will play a new role. We’ll hold Keir to account and make sure he keeps his promises, champion big ideas like the Green New Deal, build the power of Labour members and do everything we can to get a Labour government elected.”

Read more

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Keir Starmer’s first 100 days: how can he make a mark in a crisis?

New Labour leader Keir Starmer faces challenge of uniting party

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We urgently need an effective opposition – Starmer needs to build one

Coronavirus: New Labour leader Keir Starmer promises to 'work constructively' with Boris Johnson


James MorrisSenior news reporter, Yahoo News UK•April 4, 2020

Sir Keir Starmer, right, has promised to 'work constructively' 

with Boris Johnson. (PA/file image)


New Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has promised to “work constructively” with Boris Johnson during the ongoing coronavirus crisis.

Immediately after his election on Saturday, Sir Keir called Johnson and offered his help “on how best to respond” to the outbreak.

He also accepted Johnson’s invitation to meet with opposition party leaders next week, with the prime minister having called for all parties to “work together at this moment of national emergency”.

A spokesman for Sir Keir said: “This afternoon Keir Starmer spoke with the PM about the current national emergency.

“Keir offered to work constructively with the government on how best to respond to the coronavirus outbreak, accepted the PM’s offer to meet next week and agreed arrangements for Privy Council briefings and discussions.”

Johnson said of the call:

I have just spoken to @Keir_Starmer & congratulated him on becoming Labour leader. We agreed on the importance of all party leaders continuing to work constructively together through this national emergency. I have invited him and other opposition leaders to a briefing next week.

— Boris Johnson #StayHomeSaveLives (@BorisJohnson) April 4, 2020

Sir Keir was elected with a commanding 56.2% of the 490,731 votes cast by party members.

Though he subsequently agreed to work with Johnson, Sir Keir had also warned in his first statement following his election: “At times like this, we need good government, a government that saves lives and protects our country.

“It’s a huge responsibility and whether we voted for this government or not, we all rely on it to get this right.”

Johnson’s government has come under increasing fire over its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, with questions raised about issues such as testing and protective equipment for frontline NHS staff.

UK

Labour: Starmer is paving the way for the triumph of dark politics

By waging an all-out war on the left and its ideas, the Labour leader is strangling hope of change in a time of crisis and risks driving voters towards right-wing authoritarians

Britain's main opposition Labour Party leader Keir Starmer waits to address delegates during the London Labour Regional Conference in central London on 28 January 2023 (AFP)

There is a reason - and not the one given - why Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has announced that he is banning his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, from standing as a candidate for the party at the next general election.

Corbyn has been sitting as an independent since Starmer exiled him from the Labour benches in late 2020 - after Corbyn observed that it was for “political reasons” he faced years of evidence-free accusations the Labour Party was beset by antisemitism on his watch. He called the accusation “dramatically overstated”.

The official grounds for Corbyn being permanently barred from returning to the parliamentary party are that he has refused to apologise for his comment.

No other political leader, not even Tony Blair, has haunted the thoughts of his successor in quite the way Corbyn continues to do so

Announcing Corbyn’s exclusion as a candidate, Starmer said Labour would "never again be brought to its knees by racism or bigotry. If you don't like that, if you don't like the changes we have made, I say the door is open and you can leave".

The establishment media - from right to supposed left - are trying to bolster Starmer’s claims about Corbyn and his supporters by continuing to weave a web of misrepresentations about the former leader being depraved and unhinged.

Antisemitism in Labour is apparently being kept at bay only because of Starmer’s vigilance, in contrast to Corbyn’s supposed indulgence. And, were Corbyn to be serving as prime minister today, we are warned, he would be taking “cranky” foreign policy decisions, like encouraging a diplomatic process to end the bloodshed in Ukraine.

No other political leader, not even Tony Blair, has haunted the thoughts of his successor - or the airwaves and pages of the billionaire-owned media - in quite the way Corbyn continues to do so.

Even a disastrous, if brief, prime minister like Liz Truss quickly faded from memory. Boris Johnson stays in the British public’s imagination only because the scandals and dramas he presided over are still playing out, and because in the crisis-plagued Conservative Party, he might yet manage to claw his way back into Downing Street.

So why the perennial concern about Corbyn, even as he languishes on the backbenches, outside the two-party chokehold on British politics, with no evident path back to power? Why does his shadow loom so large?

All-out war

The reason has nothing to do with antisemitism or Corbyn’s criticisms of the West’s response to the Ukraine war - or rather, not in the sense Starmer and commentators would have you believe.

Like the media, Starmer wants not just the solitary figure of Corbyn gone from British politics. He wants to eradicate something far more dangerous to the establishment: Corbynism, the ideas of a fairer, more equal society the former Labour leader gave life to, as well as the potential grassroots movement he represents.

Labour's Forde report is devastating on factional war against Corbyn

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In his light-on-detail speech last week, Starmer set out his top “five missions”, in which he chiefly sought to present himself as a better steward of neoliberalism than the ruling Tory party.

But even in purdah, Corbyn continues to serve as a symbol.

Starmer’s efforts to disappear his predecessor from the Labour Party - and from British political life - has operated in tandem with his all-out war on a large section of the party’s members, who have been gradually driven from the ranks.

That has very much included Jewish Labour members standing in solidarity with Corbyn. Under Starmer, they have been ousted from the party in disproportionately large numbers.

Notably, that is a fact barely reported by the media because it flies in the face of their phoney narrative: both that antisemitism thrived under Corbyn and only under Corbyn; and that it is Starmer who is eradicating racism from the party.

Even YouGov polling found that already low levels of antisemitism in Labour actually reduced during Corbyn’s tenure as the party drew in huge numbers of new left-wing supporters, attracted by his anti-imperialist, anti-racist, more egalitarian agenda.

A paradox, also unremarked by the establishment media, is that Starmer waited to make his move against Corbyn until immediately after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) announced it was ending its monitoring of Labour for antisemitism.

It was the EHRC’s 2020 report that paved the way to Corbyn’s removal from the Labour benches, after its conclusions were heavily misrepresented by the media.

Vilifying Corbyn

Corbyn was judged to have interfered in antisemitism cases, with the implication that his office tried to stop antisemites from being expelled. The truth was the opposite, as the EHRC quietly conceded. His team “interfered” only in the sense that they tried to speed up the handling of disciplinary cases his right-wing opponents in the party bureaucracy stalled in a bid to fuel the antisemitism smears.

Starmer is interfering in disciplinary cases too - and doing so openly and proudly, including overturning a decision in late 2020 by his National Executive Committee to reinstate Corbyn as an MP. But this time the EHRC seems unconcerned.

The EHRC has given Starmer its official stamp of anti-racism approval even as his officials drive out Jewish members in unprecedented numbers. These are Jews whose mistreatment no one in public life seemingly cares about - because they back Corbyn.

Last week, hot on the heels of that stamp of approval, and mocking the idea that Starmer’s party is interested in tackling racism, Labour barred its local constituency parties from affiliating with a range of progressive groups.

Those included Jewish Voice for Labour, which represents Jews highly critical of Israel’s oppression of Palestinians, and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, the main UK organisation representing Palestinian interests, as well as Somalis for Labour, Sikhs for Labour and the All African Women’s Group.

The Equalities watchdog’s “special measures” on Labour are also apparently not needed even though prominent Black party members, such as former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, also a Corbyn ally, complain that Starmer’s Labour has done nothing to address anti-Black racism exposed in the recent Forde Report.

The truth is that Starmer and the establishment media will not be satisfied until they have driven a stake through the heart of Corbynism, and its genuine commitment to anti-racism and a more egalitarian approach to the economy. That is why they have never sounded more desperate to vilify him and his supporters.

An outburst on BBC TV last week by Guardian columnist Rafael Behr skated exceptionally close to libelling not only Corbyn but the entire British left as frothing-at-the-mouth Jew haters.

Sinking ship

As the saying goes, you can’t kill an idea. And the ideas Corbyn gave life to are even harder to kill when the country’s current leaders look not just inept but concerned only to asset-strip the ship before it goes down - while the best promised by Starmer, the opposition leader, is to slow down the looting.

Even to many of its admirers, capitalism, especially of today’s turbo-charged variety, increasingly looks mired in crisis. Bereft of solutions, its architects have to constantly peddle distractions and exploit emergencies, from the Ukraine war and growing tensions with China to the cost-of-living crisis and the pandemic.

The country's leaders look not just inept but concerned only to asset-strip the ship before it goes down - while the best promised by Starmer is to slow down the looting

In an age of climate breakdown, resulting from an over-consumption model impossible for our profit-driven corporations to wean themselves off, socialism’s appeal may quickly resurface - or, at least, that appears to be the establishment’s concern.

Karl Marx, the now unfashionable 19th-century political economist, observed that capitalism “sowed the seeds of its own destruction”. And sure enough, capitalism looks like it is being strangled by its own internal contradictions, forcing a stark choice between continuing wealth accumulation and our species’ survival on a finite planet.

The job of Britain’s politicians is not, of course, to air these contradictions or highlight their parties’ lack of solutions. It is to keep the ship on course, heading towards the iceberg. It is to keep underscoring threats from overseas “madmen”. It is to be in lockstep with Nato and its expansion through resource wars that further enrich the wealthy while justifying austerity for everyone else. And most fundamentally of all, it is to remain piously in thrall to the City and the euphemism of “economic growth”.

Any leader who refuses to abide by these stipulations faces a campaign of demonisation, as Corbyn found to his cost.

Gaslighting members

Over the past three years, Starmer has been busy setting out his conditions for remaining in the Labour Party tent - parameters that just so happen to mirror precisely the British establishment’s requirements for legitimacy in public life.

Starmer demands simple-minded patriotism and an unwavering commitment to the West’s Nato military alliance and its aggressive posturing and expansion. He ostentatiously prioritises the needs of big business and demurs about the right of those abused by neoliberalism to strike. He describes himself as a proud Zionist and decries any but the softest criticism of Israel as proof of antisemitism.

Alongside the anti-racist groups, Starmer has banned local constituency parties from affiliating with the Stop the War Coalition, which campaigns against the West’s endless military "interventions", the Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Corbyn's Peace & Justice Project, and the Campaign Against Climate Change Trades Union Group.

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In other words, in a system rigged to allow only two parties to contend for power, those who want Labour to serve as a vehicle for meaningful change are not welcome. Labour will not tolerate the struggle against imperialism, or efforts to stop endless resource wars, or trenchant opposition to Israel’s subjugation of the Palestinian people, or Britain’s further militarisation, or anything more than tinkering with gross wealth disparities.

And it is not even ideological differences being cited as the grounds for expelling members from the country’s only major “socialist” party. It is based on smears: that they are racists, antisemites, and stooges of Vladimir Putin.

Even as he denied Corbyn the right to stand as a Labour candidate, Starmer gaslit members, telling them Labour “will never again be a party captured by narrow interests. It will never again lose sight of its purpose or its morals”.

But Corbyn’s effective expulsion bluntly sends exactly the opposite message: that Labour has been fully captured by the boss class and will not permit any dissent.

Coup de grace

One might have expected a little pushback, if only from Britain’s self-declared liberal-left daily newspaper, the Guardian. But its columnists have been largely revelling in Starmer delivering the coup de grace against Corbyn.

Sonia Sodha called the decision "morally correct" and "to Starmer’s credit", while Polly Toynbee averred that excluding Corbyn was "inevitable" because the Labour Party could not afford to be even "a little bit racist".

Those who suggest Starmer is the broom needed to clean out Labour’s stables will doubtless get the outcome they predict. Running against a ruling Conservative Party in disarray and led by stale, colourless leaders reeking of privilege in a party mired in cronyism, Starmer is almost certain to win the next election - if only by default.

In blocking the left from a visible political presence, in stifling its ideas in a time of crisis, Starmer is leaving the field open to the far right

And that is as far as most pundits wish to look. But politics has long-term trends too. Capitalism’s crises, just like climate breakdown, are not going away. They will intensify, as will popular alienation, frustration and anger.

That means those offering a programme of radical change are going to prosper, and those clinging to a discredited status quo will face steady decline and marginalisation. Voters will increasingly be drawn to figures promising decisive action over inaction.

In blocking the left from a visible political presence, in stifling its ideas and creativity in a time of crisis, Starmer is leaving the field open to the far right. They will be only too eager to highlight and exploit the deficiencies of a soulless Labour Party, one that pays no more than lip service to resolving Britain’s problems.

And they will doubtless also scapegoat the usual suspects - not the rich, not those in power, but immigrants, Jews and “communists” - who will be blamed for bringing the UK to its knees.

Ultimately, the smearing of Corbyn and the Labour left will bring about the very things the Labour right and the establishment media claim they seek to avert: Britain will become a darker, more racist, more authoritarian place.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net