Starmer, sleaze and Labour’s uphill struggle
Oct 6, 2024 11:14:14 GMT
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Post by thomas on Oct 6, 2024 11:14:14 GMT
Martin Shipton
We’re three months into a UK Labour government, and it’s not going well.
I had no expectation that the party would depart massively from the Tories’ austerity policies. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves had made it abundantly clear during the general election campaign that, in effect, there would be more of the same.
But what is enormously disappointing, as well as quite unexpected, is the way Labour has so quickly become mired in sleaze.
When Starmer was elected as Labour’s leader, it was assumed he would make the party electable in the way it hadn’t been under Jeremy Corbyn.
In a counterintuitive kind of way, his lack of charisma and indeed quite boring personality was seen as a positive virtue in comparison with the egocentric flamboyance of Boris Johnson during the Covid crisis.
No politician wants to be regarded as a figure of ridicule. On Friday the Labour junior minister Rushanara Ali said on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions that Keir Starmer was committed to restoring trust and integrity in politics. The audience responded with laughter.
As a friend pointed out to me: “This is a real danger for Labour. Starmer has lost the room.”
Unlike Ireland, Rachel Reeves will not be delivering a giveaway “feelgood” Budget at the end of this month.
Labour faces an uphill struggle to redeem itself.
nation.cymru/opinion/starmer-sleaze-and-labours-uphill-struggle/
We’re three months into a UK Labour government, and it’s not going well.
I had no expectation that the party would depart massively from the Tories’ austerity policies. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves had made it abundantly clear during the general election campaign that, in effect, there would be more of the same.
But what is enormously disappointing, as well as quite unexpected, is the way Labour has so quickly become mired in sleaze.
When Starmer was elected as Labour’s leader, it was assumed he would make the party electable in the way it hadn’t been under Jeremy Corbyn.
In a counterintuitive kind of way, his lack of charisma and indeed quite boring personality was seen as a positive virtue in comparison with the egocentric flamboyance of Boris Johnson during the Covid crisis.
No politician wants to be regarded as a figure of ridicule. On Friday the Labour junior minister Rushanara Ali said on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions that Keir Starmer was committed to restoring trust and integrity in politics. The audience responded with laughter.
As a friend pointed out to me: “This is a real danger for Labour. Starmer has lost the room.”
Unlike Ireland, Rachel Reeves will not be delivering a giveaway “feelgood” Budget at the end of this month.
Labour faces an uphill struggle to redeem itself.
nation.cymru/opinion/starmer-sleaze-and-labours-uphill-struggle/
