Labor leader seeks himself
Keir Starmer wants to become British Prime Minister, but the Labor leader first has to explain who he is at the party conference. Can this man be dangerous to Boris Johnson?
Keir Starmer has been a Labor leader since April 2020.
Photo: AFP
The week Keir Starmer finally wants to make it clear who he is begins with the question of whether only women have a cervix. It can be said that the week does not start as Keir Starmer imagined.
This is the UK’s annual conference week WorkParty, they rented a couple of hotels in Brighton Beach for that. Sometimes news of the world appears on one of the televisions that are everywhere, but hardly anyone is watching. Party conventions are days in the tunnel of self-discovery, especially for Labor: UK elections are likely in two years, and Labor wants to rule again after eleven years of opposition.
Keir Starmer, 59, a former chief prosecutor, has been Labor Chief since April 2020. If British politics were a video game, it would be Boris Johnson the strongest character, his special ability would be a protective shield that everything bounces against, and if you ran the levels with him and defeated all the Theresa Mays and Jeremy Corbyns, Keir Starmer would eventually appear as the final boss. That moment could have come in two years and no one knows what would happen then. No one knows what the special ability of Keir Starmer’s character would be.
Hasn’t been a politician for a long time
Sir Keir Rodney Starmer, who grew up in wealthy Surrey and has been a member of the House of Commons since 2015, has not been a politician for long. The week in Brighton is his party’s first conference in front of an audience, which is what makes it so important to him, the future prime minister, if he has his way. The party’s congress audience is made up of members, but also journalists. The latter tend to appear in the force of the regiment in Great Britain.
Who is Keir Starmer? No matter where it appears in Brighton, the question is already there.
On Sunday, Starmer is sitting in the Andrew Marr television studio in Brighton, with the sea in the background. Andrew Marr is one of the most famous political interviewers in the country, every Sunday he asks his guests direct and concise questions on the BBC. Marr never smiles, interviews are usually more of an interrogation. ‘Keir,’ says Marr, ‘you’ve been a Labor leader for 18 months. Why do you still have to introduce yourself to people? “
Basically, Marr knows the answer, it’s less about what Starmer would say, which is that a locked-in politician has a hard time getting his message across to the people. But it is already clear, move on to the next topic: the cervix.
In between, one has the feeling that the tunnel of self-discovery has no way out for Labor.
In short, the cervix issue is about statements by Labor politician Rosie Duffield that it is clear to her that only women have a cervix, regardless of the rights that are so important to the transgender movement. Duffield was harshly criticized for this from the transgender scene, the issue simmered for days. On Sunday, Starmer told Marr, somewhat uneasy, that it was wrong to say that only women have a cervix. Conservative Health Minister Sajid Javid immediately reacted in various newspapers: How could a man who ignores medical facts run the health service?
It didn’t work out for Keir Starmer in the early days, although it doesn’t help that he really wants to push for some changes to the party statutes on the party leadership election procedure, technical details actually. Starmer believes that they are important: he believes that this will help him control the fight between the extreme left and the rest of the party. That may be true, but what ensues is a battle between the far left and the rest of the party for precisely those rule changes.
The internal dispute is part of the labor DNA. But: a dispute over party statutes, while outside of one’s conservative government crisis slips into the next? In between, one has the feeling that the tunnel of self-discovery has no way out for Labor.
Jeremy Corbyn, the radical left predecessor of Labor leader Keir Starmer.
Photo: AFP
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester and currently the most popular Labor politician in most polls, says daily somewhere in Brighton that Labor needs solutions, not constitutional debates. The media picks up all the quotes from Starmer’s critics, some votes don’t go the way Starmer wanted, and then a shadow cabinet member resigns. The longer the conference lasts, the more it resembles Sir Keir’s fight for political survival. The Guardian wrote on Tuesday that the successors were already ready in the background.
“What do you want?”
Shortly after 12 noon on Wednesday, he begins his speech. Starmer speaks in a very personal way, speaking of “mom and dad”, and in the middle he introduces the parents of a murdered young woman whom he helped as a lawyer. The audience applauds standing up, the mother cries. His speech lasted almost an hour and a half, he made concrete suggestions, he spoke on all the issues of a ruling party, he gave facts and figures.
You use the word “serious” very often. When he repeatedly interferes with those who interrupt from the left wing, he says: “What do you want to shout slogans or change lives?”
Who is Keir Starmer? He is not a man catcher, he is not a Boris Johnson, nor is he like Jeremy Corbyn, his left-wing predecessor. That’s enough for now: when Starmer leaves the hall in Brighton, the members celebrate.
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