After McSweeney: A Fresh Start for Starmer or the Beginning of the End?
A brief examination of the structural and strategic challenges facing Keir Starmer’s premiership following the departure of his chief strategist, Morgan McSweeney.
Labour Party
Keir Starmer urged to field Labour candidates in Northern Ireland elections…
The perennial issue of Labour running candidates in Northern Ireland has popped up again. From the Daily Mirror: Keir Starmer is being pressed to allow Labour to field candidates in Northern Ireland elections. The move could give the Labour leader the few extra MPs he might need in a tight general election. Labour currently backs its sister party, the nationalist SDLP, which has two MPs and 12 assembly members. But shadow trade secretary Emily Thornberry said: “We should be offering …
What are Labour for?
They are a party who haven’t run official candidates in NI for nearly 60 years. Yet so much of the past century has been influenced by the once mighty Labour party. Sir Keir Starmer is proving more popular in technocratic opinion polls, but will his virtual party leader speech made today filter through into positive headlines for the beleaguered centre-left? Poly Toynbee has thrown down the gauntlet to her ideological partners, calling on Labour is re-capture a sense of patriotism …
Keir Starmer elected as new leader of the Labour Party…
At last Labour Party members have seen sense and decided to choose an electable leader. Keir won on the first round of voting, with more than 50% of the vote. For the few, not the many. pic.twitter.com/OxJzbsGs1F — The Socialist Party (@OfficialSPGB) April 4, 2020 Keir is a poster child for social mobility. From a working-class background he passed the 11plus and worked his way up to the dizzy heights of Sir Keir Starmer KCB QC. As you can see …
The Labour left have won the party battle but with ammunition like this, they look like losing the war
Andrew Murray Andrew Murray is an easy man to demonise. Born to Scottish gentry, he’s a Unite official and former Communist, joining Jeremy Corbyn’s team only in 2016. Accused of being a Russian spy, he claimed he was a victim of the British “deep state.” Nevertheless the Financial Times has paid Murray the compliment of objectively reviewing his new book “The Rise and Fall of the British Left. “ Like it or loathe it, the Left critique of post-recession capitalism …
What would happen at GE2019 if it is more like the 2019 European election than the last general election?
Previously, I looked at what might happen at a future general election using the 2017 general election results as a base and a YouGov poll to redistribute votes to see how a new general election might pan out. This poll gave the Tories a 9 point lead over Labour in second place, and accordingly in such a scenario the Tories would win a majority despite a historically low vote share, albeit with a smaller majority if the Lib Dems, Greens …
General election seat forecasts are no longer useful
For much of the last century, general elections in Great Britain have been largely predictable affairs. Aside from the odd Liberal, SNP and Plaid Cymru MP returned here and there, Westminster elections were a battle between Labour and the Conservatives. The relationship between the opinion polls and election results was straightforward; most constituencies were either safe Labour or Tory seats, and it was well established that a few points gained or lost in the opinion polls could predict the winner …
The Brexit Party look set to dominate at the European Elections in Great Britain as the Conservatives collapse
The Conservatives are on the verge of being virtually wiped out at this Thursday’s European election, whilst the Brexit Party look set to improve on the 24 seats that Ukip won at the 2014 poll. Using the data from this YouGov poll and analysis on the number of seats won by the vote received in the 2014 election, I estimated the probability of each party winning each seat in each European constituency. The Brexit Party would be, by far, the …
UK Parliament Declares Environment and Climate Emergency
The House of Commons has tonight declared an “environment and climate emergency.” The first national parliament in the world to do so. This comes in the wake of mass civil action by Extinction Rebellion, school strikes for climate, and local declarations of climate emergency all over the world. The UK Labour Party, which proposed the motion, asked MPs to “act with commensurate urgency.” Something which the Green Party have been urging for a very long time. In the last few …
Seven MPs resign from UK Labour to sit as an independent group in Parliament
Right at the point where Her Majesty’s Opposition might be expected to galvanise their efforts against a Tory party that is pulling itself in different directions, the UK Labour party is in disarray. This morning ‘gang of seven’ MPs have resigned from the Labour Party: Luciana Berger, Ann Coffey, Mike Gapes, Chris Leslie, Gavin Shuker, Angela Smith and Chuka Umunna. Berger explained: “This morning we have all now resigned from the Labour Party. This has been a very difficult, painful, …
Theresa May must do business with Jeremy Corbyn. So is it goodbye DUP?
In her heart, Theresa May must realise that her desperate attempts to hold a Conservative majority together and avoid a crash out No Deal in fifty days’ time are on the point of collapse. She told Donald Tusk yesterday that her party would never unite behind Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit letter and that 30 of her MPs would never back her deal unless changes were made to the Irish backstop. To hear them all talk you’d think they had all the …
In spite of a day without precedent, it’s still party before country from the Conservatives and Labour
At the very moment Conservative and Labour MPs are passionately proclaiming the need to work together, the two parties are locked in the elemental struggle for power after a major defeat, a vote of confidence in the government. This is Labour’s ritual act to stave off having to commit to a policy. For theirs is a unicorn with a mighty horn, a customs relationship that allows unilateral free trade negotiations and a single market relationship that restricts free movement. On …
“This is the “Canada-plus” option the EU at one point said it would never agree to…”
The Irish Times today carries the view of, the always worth reading, FT columnist Wolfgang Münchau on the withdrawal agreement between the UK and EU. First he makes a quick point on the opposition on both sides of the House of Commons… When British cabinet ministers resigned hours after the publication of the withdrawal agreement between the UK and EU, they could not conceivably have read it, let alone digested its finer points. Many of the MPs who denounced the …
The Conservatives have a mountain to climb to challenge Labour’s social media dominance
In the wake of this year’s snap general election, it has become apparent that age, not social class, has become the new fault line in British politics. Analysis published by YouGov highlights the woeful electoral performance by the Conservatives amongst younger voters. Amongst 18 and 19 year old voters at the 2017 general election, Labour were ahead of the Tories by a staggering 47 points (66% to 19%), and were 40 points ahead of the Conservatives with voters in their …
Will YouGov’s election model be vindicated when the results are in?
Opinion polling firm YouGov have raised eyebrows in the run up to Thursday’s poll with the results of their forecast model, which at the time of writing is forecasting that the Conservatives will only win 307 seats. This would deprive them of their parliamentary majority, and leaves open the possibility that Jeremy Corbyn could become Prime Minister if Labour could secure support from the smaller parties in the Commons. The YouGov model is out of line with other election forecasts, …
Yes, Corbyn condemned the IRA. And the rest
Yesterday Jeremy Corbyn allegedly refused to condemn the IRA when pressed multiple times during a television interview. This sent various media into a frothing overdrive, delighted Conservatives, and apparently set off the whataboutery alarm at DUP headquarters, who immediately and predictably declared Corbyn “beyond the political pale”. Except, of course, he did not refuse to condemn the IRA. Rather, he insisted on condemning the IRA and any other perpetrator of violence by condemning “violence on all sides”. James Brokenshire, who …
Labour facing real risk of wipeout as their polling slump continues
The past days have seen a number of opinion polls released ahead of June’s General Election, and they continue to make grim reading for the Labour Party. The ComRes/Sunday Mirror poll gave the Conservatives a 50% share, double that of Labour on 25%. The last fortnight has continued to give Tories a vote share in the high forties, whilst Labour have been languishing far behind on the low to mid twenties. Were these results to be replicated in the election …
Ditching Corbyn now: probably the daftest political idea in the world
As I write Labour politicians are defecting from the shadow cabinet at a rate faster than people left the Titanic. That analogy is flawed as it seems most people behaved rather honourably in that bygone age (although First Class women passengers had the highest survival rate, Third Class women had a higher survival rate than First Class men). The reasons for this mass desertion are many but fundamentally they come down to Corbyn’s leadership during the referendum campaign and his …
Labour and Europe: a brief history
The recent narrowing of the polls in the EU referendum has prompted much soul searching by the Remain camp. This may all be unnecessary as exactly the same was seen in the Scottish referendum before Remain’s victory. However, for the meantime Remain is rattled. Much of their angst seems to be coming from the revelation that substantial numbers of traditional Labour supporters are going to back Brexit. This realisation has come with much complaining that Labour is being too metropolitan …
The perfect poem for Labour’s anti-semitism row
Those following the anti-Semitism row in the Labour Party will be aware of the recent suspension of Momentum vice chair, Jackie Walker. Following an investigation into comments she made on Facebook about Jews and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, she’s been reinstated into the party. The Walker incident, and similar incidents, have opened a fierce debate about the Left and anti-Semitism, and where anti-Zionism crosses the line into racism. But let’s step back from the intensity of the frontlines of this …