Category Archives: Keir Starmer

Labour needs more ‘coherent narrative’ to win next election, Starmer told

Posted on by

Exclusive: Labour Together leader calls for ‘laser-sharp focus’ on voters and for party’s priorities to be made clear

Keir Starmer has been urged to get Labour on a general election footing with a “laser-sharp” focus on wooing voters with a small number of key pledges that demonstrate the party’s priorities rather than a sprawling plethora of policies.

With activists gearing up to take on Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives in 2024, a new head of Labour Together – a network of MPs, staffers, members and thinktanks – has been appointed, who believes the party should build a more “coherent narrative”.

Continue reading...

Voters choose Sunak’s Tories over Labour to repair economy, new poll reveals

Posted on by

Rishi Sunak’s arrival in Downing Street is already helping to repair the party’s reputation for financial management

Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives have overturned Labour’s lead in terms of who voters trust most to manage the economy, a new poll for the Observer has revealed.

The new prime minister is currently drawing up tax rises and spending cuts designed to fill a £40bn fiscal hole left by Liz Truss’s disastrous time in Downing Street, with warnings that any significant attempt to cut Whitehall budgets will lead to huge pressure on public services. It comes with new analysis revealing that freezing public service spending would save £20bn but would also lead to a return to the austerity of the 2010s.

Continue reading...

The Sun always backs the winner: can the Murdoch papers warm to Keir Starmer?

Posted on by

Former DPP Starmer tried to send head of News UK Rebekah Brooks to prison for phone hacking 10 years ago

Ten years ago Keir Starmer attempted to send Rebekah Brooks to prison for phone hacking.

Now Starmer could cause another headache for the boss of Rupert Murdoch’s British media empire. She has to work out how her Tory-backing newspapers – which include the Sun and the Times – handle the growing popularity of the man who is favourite to become the next prime minister.

Continue reading...

Starmer goes on attack over Braverman reappointment at Sunak’s first PMQs

Posted on by

PM accused of immediately breaking integrity pledge by restoring home secretary in ‘grubby deal’

Rishi Sunak has been accused of immediately breaking his pledge to restore government integrity by bringing Suella Braverman back as home secretary in exchange for a key endorsement for his leadership bid.

Coming under pressure in his first prime minister’s questions, Sunak did not deny that civil servants had raised concerns about one of the most senior roles handed out in his cabinet reshuffle on Tuesday.

Continue reading...

Starmer urges focused Sunak attack lines as Tories expect ‘poll bounce’

Posted on by

The Labour leader said the shadow cabinet should stick to tried and tested criticism of the new PM

Labour has a stock of well-honed attack lines to use against Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer told his shadow cabinet on Tuesday, though he warned the new prime minister was likely to get “a significant poll bounce” as the UK breathed a sigh of relief over Liz Truss’s departure.

Starmer told the meeting Sunak “has only ever fought one leadership election battle his entire life and got thrashed by Liz Truss. And no wonder he doesn’t want to fight a general election”.

Continue reading...

Starmer ‘should bring in workplace pension for the self-employed’

Posted on by

Fabian Society also says Labour needs to be radical and introduce better provision for the lowest paid

Sir Keir Starmer should promise that a future Labour government would introduce a new workplace pension for self-employed workers and more generous retirement provision for the low paid, a leading left-of-centre thinktank has said.

Calling for the biggest shake-up of the pensions’ system in two decades, the Fabian Society said Labour needed to copy the radical approach of the Turner Commission two decades ago, which encouraged saving through opt-out schemes.

Increasing the minimum contributions for workplace auto-enrolment pensions to 12% of total earnings from the current 8%. This would be done by phasing in higher contributions from employers over time.

The introduction of new pension credits for carers, who are primarily women, to reduce the “gender pensions gap”

Changes to how people access pensions at retirement so that separate pensions are automatically consolidated into a single fund and then converted into new whole-of-retirement pension plans designed to increase with inflation.

Continue reading...

Suella Braverman replaced by Grant Shapps; Labour motion calling for fracking ban fails – live

Posted on by

Home secretary departs after sending an official document by personal email but uses resignation letter to criticise PM

Plans to create Great British Railways, a public sector body to oversee Britain’s railways, have been delayed, MPs have been told.

Anne-Marie Trevelyan, the transport secretary, told the Commons transport committee that the transport bill, which would have set up the new body, has been delayed because legislation to deal with the energy crisis is being prioritised. She said:

The challenges of things like the energy legislation we’ve got to bring in and various others has meant that we have lost the opportunity to have that [bill] in this third session.

What we are continuing to pitch for will be what I would call a narrow bill around the future of transport technologies, the legislation around things like e-scooters.

Continue reading...

Jeremy Hunt to detail mini-budget U-turn to MPs after Penny Mordaunt insists PM had ‘genuine reason’ for missing Commons question – live

Posted on by

Latest updates: chancellor to make statement after leader of Commons denied PM was hiding under a desk

Judging by what Conservative MPs have been telling journalists in private over the last few days, the consensus (but not unanimous) view among Tories seems to be that Liz Truss will have to be replaced as party leader before the next election. But very few MPs are saying that in public, and Sky’s Tom Larkin, who is running a spreadsheet of Tories calling for Truss’s resignation, has only got three names on it.

Damian Green, the former first secretary of state, was on the Today programme and you would expect him to be on the Larkin list. He is chair of the One Nation Conservatives caucus, the group most horrified by Truss’s experiment with hardline free market ideology. But he insisted that Truss did have the credibility to carry on as PM, despite the fact she is abandoning most of the key tax policies at the heart of her leadership campaign. He explained:

She is a pragmatist - she’s realised that the first budget didn’t work in spectacular fashion, so she’s now taken the sensible view that we will now try something else, and she’s appointed a very sensible chancellor in Jeremy Hunt.

I obviously don’t know what he’s going to say, but clearly what he’s going to do is already beginning to reassure the markets, and I hope will continue to do so afterwards.

Yes, because if she leads us into the next election, that will mean that the next two years have been a lot more successful than the past four weeks have been. That would not only be good for the Conservative party, that would be particularly good for the country as well, so I think everyone would welcome that.

Continue reading...

Jeremy Hunt says mistakes made and taxes set to rise as Bank warns of ‘strong response’ to inflation – UK politics live

Posted on by

Chancellor says ‘difficult decisions’ ahead with some departments needing to find savings and some taxes set to rise

Hunt says the UK has a “massive amount going for us”, but the reason it remains a top economy is because the country has been prepared to make “tough decisions” – and this moment is one of them.

The new chancellor says he is “very sensitive” to people at the bottom of the income scale but will not commit to not cutting benefits. “I’ve only been in the job for a matter of hours,” he says, adding that he will be sitting down with the Treasury team later today.

Continue reading...

Keir Starmer criticises ‘grotesque chaos’ under Liz Truss government

Posted on by

Labour leader says UK is ‘crying out for clear leadership’ and his party ‘must provide it’

Keir Starmer has criticised the “grotesque chaos” of recent weeks and said the government “no longer has a mandate from the British people”.

The Labour leader said there were no historical precedents for the ongoing economic turmoil and that the prime minister, Liz Truss, would not be able to “fix the mess she has created”.

Continue reading...

No 10 warns of ‘difficult decisions’ on public spending despite Truss’s vow to avoid cuts – UK politics live

Posted on by

Statement from No 10 comes straight after PM told MPs she was ‘absolutely’ committed to avoiding public spending cuts

Sajid Javid, the former Tory chancellor, has been speaking at an event organised by the Legatum Institute thinktank this morning. As Chris Smyth from the Times reports, Javid said the turmoil in the markets was caused by the fact that the tax cuts in the mini-budget went “way beyond” what Liz Truss promised during the leadership campaign, and by the fact that her energy bills bailout was also much bigger than expected.

The government has drawn up a plan to cap the unit cost of gas and electricity for two years. Labour proposed its own plan to freeze energy bills, but it only proposed a commitment for six months.

Continue reading...

Liz Truss insists tax cuts will go ahead despite public spending promise

Posted on by

PM suggests borrowing will rise as she surprises MPs by saying she has no plans to cut public spending

Liz Truss has said the Conservatives will push ahead with tax cuts without cutting public spending, instead allowing borrowing to rise over the next few years.

Senior economists had warned on Wednesday that such a strategy, if set out by Kwasi Kwarteng in the chancellor’s fiscal plan at the end of this month, would be likely to spook investors, creating renewed market turmoil.

Continue reading...

Starmer’s chief of staff to leave job as Labour leader unveils major party shake-up – UK politics live

Posted on by

Latest updates: Labour leader hoping to put party on war footing ahead of next election

In the supreme court Dorothy Bain KC, the lord advocate, the Scottish government’s most senior law officer, is now setting out her case.

Here is the 50-page submission to the court setting our her case that was released in July.

Despite the political context of this reference, the questions the court has to decide are limited to technical questions of law. The court will decide them by applying legal principles.

The court will require time after the hearing to prepare its judgement. The hearing is the tip of the iceberg. We also have more than 8000 pages of written material to consider.

Therefore, as usual, is likely to be some months before we get our judgement.

Continue reading...

Keir Starmer axes chief of staff to put Labour on ‘election footing’

Posted on by

Restructuring includes departure of Sam White, as party leader seeks to capitalise on slump in Tory support

Keir Starmer has announced a major shake-up of his political team, including the departure of his chief of staff, Sam White, saying Labour was being put on an immediate election footing.

Boosted by turmoil in the Conservative party and a string of hefty leads in opinion polls, Starmer said the party needed to move into the next phase of election readiness.

Continue reading...

To win an outright Commons majority, Labour will have to gamble

Posted on by

Surging poll numbers mean the party can dare to dream of No 10, but it’s been here before, and the path is riskier than ever

Twelve short months ago, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives were riding a vaccine bounce, and high-spirited Tory commentators were speculating about another decade in office. Now it is Labour who are buoyant, as their poll numbers surge to record highs after a disastrous mini-budget from the new Truss administration unleashed economic and political turmoil. Some in Labour now dare to dream big. Could their party rebound from the worst performance in 80 years straight to a Commons majority?

Veterans counsel caution. Labour has been burned before. Ed Miliband’s opposition posted regular big poll leads during the coalition only for these to evaporate come polling day. But history never repeats itself exactly. Unless the economic weather changes fast, the next election will be fought in the wake of inflation, recession and home repossessions. The Conservatives’ ratings on economic management are already the worst in a generation, with much of the real pain still to come. When their reputation was last torched like this, by the ERM crisis, the next result was a Labour landslide. Time to start humming Things Can Only Get Better?

Robert Ford is professor of political science at Manchester University and co-author of The British General Election of 2019

Continue reading...

Truss ‘standing by Kwarteng’ as Treasury defends plans despite market turmoil – as it happened

Posted on by

No 10 says PM has faith in chancellor, as Treasury minister says tax cuts are the ‘right plan’. This blog is now closed

Q: When would you get debt falling as a proprotion of GDP?

Starmer says Labour does want to get that down.

Continue reading...

Great British Energy: what is it, what would it do and how would it be funded?

Posted on by

The details behind Keir Starmer’s proposed publicly owned energy company when Labour take power

The key pledge of Keir Starmer’s Labour conference speech was the proposed launch of Great British Energy, a publicly owned energy company to invest in clean UK power as part of the party’s commitment to “fight the Tories on economic growth”. But how does it work, and is it the same as renationalising energy?

Continue reading...

Keir Starmer promises to launch publicly-owned UK energy company as he hails ‘Labour moment’ – UK politics live

Posted on by

Latest updates: the Labour party leader used his conference speech to spell out his plan for the UK

The decision to pay Liz Truss’s new chief of staff, Mark Fullbrook, through a private company has been dropped after criticism from within the Conservatives as well as from opposition parties.

The government admitted over the weekend that Fullbrook would be paid through his lobbying firm, a move that could have helped him avoid paying tax. He had previously claimed the firm had stopped all commercial activities.

The world we are heading for is a bumpy few weeks. The chancellor is now going to have quite a tough time because he has now set out plans to balance the books in November. That is going to be very hard.

Actually balancing the books in November is going to be harder than it would have been to show you are balancing the books last week because higher interest rates will make it harder to do. You might need £15bn worth of tough choices now that you didn’t need last Friday.

In the end, lower taxes will mean worse public services, or other people’s taxes having to go up, and it is those choices and ducking those choices that markets are looking at and saying that is not what serious policymaking looks like.

Continue reading...

Labour delegates urged to back PR to end ‘trickle-down democracy’ – UK politics live

Posted on by

Latest updates: Labour delegate says current electoral system allows Tories to get away with measures like ‘protecting bankers’ bonuses’

In June, as the RMT union launched what has become an ongoing series of strikes, Keir Starmer ordered Labour frontbenchers and shadow ministerial aides not to join picket lines. This infuriated leftwing Labour MPs and some union leaders, notably Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite.

At one point it looked as if there might be a huge row at conference about whether shadow ministers should or should not be allowed to join picket lines. But, in an interview with the Today programme this morning, Graham suggested that a truce of sorts has been agreed – even if the two sides do not entirely see eye to eye.

My issue about this … isn’t necessarily around one person on a picket line because, quite frankly, that isn’t the issue. The issue is the mood music [ordering shadow ministers not to join picket lines] suggests. It suggests a mood music that being on the picket line is somehow a bad thing. It’s a naughty step situation.

The party who is there to stick up for workers should not give the impression – that’s the problem, it gives the impression – that they are saying picket lines are not the place to be. And I think that it was unfortunate. I think it was a mistake. I think, to be honest with you, Labour knows it was a mistake. And I don’t actually think it’s holdable.

When people go on strike it is a last resort at the end of negotiations. And I can quite understand how people are driven to that … I support the right of individuals to go on strike, I support the trade unions doing the job that they are doing in representing their members.

I’m incredibly disappointed that as delegates we’ve been excluded from this key part of the conference’s democratic process.

This is an unprecedented move silencing members’ voices. Our CLP sent us here to Liverpool to promote our motion on public ownership and a Green New Deal, but we’ve been unfairly denied that right.

Continue reading...

Monday at the Labour conference: the highs and lows

Posted on by

Against a backdrop of the falling pound, the opposition sets out an alternative vision

“It will fall to us to fix the damage the Tories have done. We have done it before, we will do it again” – Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, making her speech to conference on the day the pound hit a record low against the dollar.

Continue reading...