Reach “G7’s Highest Sustainable Growth”; build a national health service “for the future” and reduce “disparities” in the sector; reforming the police and justice system to “make the streets of the UK safe”; raising the level of education and “preparing young people for work and life”; and transform the country into a “clean energy superpower”, ending fossil fuel electricity production by 2030. These were the five ‘missions’ presented by British Labor leader Keir Starmer yesterday in a speech in Manchester outlining Labour’s priorities for the next election.
The British legislatures are not yet scheduled, knowing that they must take place by 25 January 2025 at the latest. However, most analysts point out that they will take place in the second half of 2024. After the worst election result since 1935 in 2019 (with Jeremy Corbyn in the lead), Labor is now 28 points ahead of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives. According to the latest YouGov poll of February 15, Labor has 50% of the voting intentions (three points more than at the beginning of the month), against 22% for the Tories (two points less).
Starmer, with a prosecutor’s resume and just five years’ experience as an MP, took over the Labor leadership in April 2020. At the time, and after the Conservatives led by Boris Johnson won a majority of 80 MPs in parliament, it was thought who would be the leader to put things in order before handing over the portfolio to his successor. But the Tories’ debacle, first with Boris’ scandals and then with the defeat of Liz Truss’s 44-day government, transformed the one few thought could become prime minister into a strong candidate.
Yesterday’s speech served Starmer, age 60, to lay out the general lines of what the party’s manifesto will be for the next election. The Labor leader vowed to “give the UK back its future” with a government guided by the five missions he listed. “I will never accept that this country is destined for decay. That our best days are in the past”he said, claiming that the 13 years of Conservative governments have made the problems “deeper, longer lasting and more painful”. And he repeated: “Success is all around us, it just needs direction.”
Starmer and Labour’s five points – which will be translated into concrete policy by the end of the year – come after the prime minister also presented his five pledges: inflation cuts, economic growth, government debt reduction, health waiting list reductions and new laws to stop the arrival of illegal immigrants in the country. Short-term promises, versus Starmer’s promises to be long-term. “I’m fighting for every vote and we have a long, long way to go. But I’m also fair enough to say that some of these issues won’t be resolved in five years,” the Labor leader said, after being questioned by journalists. .
But to many within the party, especially the more left-wing groups that supported Corbyn, such as Momentum, Starmer’s proposals sound like a new version of Tony Blair’s Third Way. A spokesman for this group recalled yesterday that the promises Starmer made three years ago when he was elected to lead the party have since been forgotten as he moved closer to the center. Among these promises was, for example, the nationalization of public services such as trains, the post office or energy.
Conservative Party chairman Greg Hands also said Starmer would say “anything” and accused the Labor leader of “a lack of principles and new ideas”. And he warned that he would revert to old “work habits” of “overspending, higher taxes, higher debts and lenient sentences”.
Source: DN
