Sir Keir, a stormy year at the helm of Labor
Sir Keir Starmer will turn his first year at the helm of the opposition and the Labor Party on 4 April. A troubled year. The article by Daniele Meloni
Sir Keir Starmer will be in a few days – to be exact next April 4 – his first year at the helm of the opposition and the Labor Party. A troubled year, which led to a general cooling of the consensus towards the Baronet ex Crown Attorney. The will to go beyond the Corbynian legacy, which had led the Party to an all-time low since 1935, and the very difficulty of overcoming a highly divisive five-year period within the historic factions fighting each other within British Labor, are leading to a growing discontent in Labor and affiliated movements.
If on the one hand Starmer suspended Corbyn from the Party over the issue of some of his comments deemed too accommodating towards anti-Semitism, on the other hand he found himself under fire – more or less friendly – by Lord Mandelson, the ideologue of New Labor and now senior advisor to the multinational consulting company, Global Counsel – who called him "too shy" in rejecting the Corbynian policies, so unsuccessful in the face of the British electorate, and in initiating a review of the movement's policies.
The Labor leader began a rather clear path last year to make Labor eligible in 2024: end of Europeanism, of which he himself was the main standard bearer, acceptance of Brexit, repositioning towards the new patriotic center of the British political system, recovery of traditional Labor think tanks such as Compass and the Fabian Society (from which he himself comes), responsible opposition. On the latter issue, Starmer was attacked in the columns of the anti-lockdownist Spectator, the magazine of the British conservative right, by James Forsyth who wondered what is the point of having an opposition that supports the government when it takes measures to restrict individual freedom of citizens and that takes away the chestnuts from the fire when even in its majority there are parliamentarians opposed to the lockdown. So Starmer voted last week to renew the emergency powers provided for in the Coronavirus Act, while over 30 MP Tories said no to Johnson.
In reality, the battle that Sir Keir is fighting is on a very rough ridge. During the pandemic, for better or for worse, it was Johnson who occupied all the media spaces. His election as Labor leader took place online without the traditional cheers of cheering and cheering at a congress as in normal times. Starmer tried to suggest positions different (but not too much) from those of the government and found the moniker of Mr. Hindsight, Mr. Senno-Di-Poi stuck on him by the Tories. When the data on the collapse of his approval reached the House of Commons, Johnson said: "I vaccine, he falters", with a taste for alliteration that only a lover of the classics of literature like the premier could exhibit. Question Time in the classroom thus turned into real Caporetto – indeed, being the UK, it would be better to say Gallipoli – for Starmer.
Then there is the question that weakens its leadership the most. The internal one. Of course, in the National Executive Committee – the party's executive body – the Corbynians are now reduced to a flicker, but among the affiliated unions the controversy against the new leadership is never lacking. The leader of Unite – one of the UK's largest unions and Labor's biggest financiers – Ken McKluskey, said in an interview with The Independent that "Starmer lacks authenticity" and "doesn't involve grassroots activists enough." The Party is perceived as "boring, without presence, without convictions and too opportunistic".
The first test for the leader will be on 6 May when many local councils will be renewed, and the new mayors of cities such as Liverpool, Manchester and London will be elected. All three in the hands of Labor. But the hardest tests for Sir Keir will be two: the Hartlepool supplementary and the election of the Scottish Parliament. If Labor in Hartlepool loses the seat it has always held (polls predict a tight race) in favor of the Government, and if in Scotland the bleeding that has seen Scottish Labor lose votes to the advantage of the nationalists continues for 10 years , for Starmer not even the possibility of resignation is excluded.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/sir-keir-un-anno-tempestoso-alla-guida-del-labour/ on Wed, 31 Mar 2021 08:26:14 +0000.