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New Statesman
23-07-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
Keir Starmer is no politician – but this could be his strength
If you cut him, would he bleed? Nobody knows. Keir Starmer is one of the strangest of all the odd characters we have had in No 10: perhaps we are only just beginning to realise just how different he is. He does almost none of the obvious things a prime minister 'must' do. With few exceptions, he doesn't speak to the cabinet. By speak, I mean properly, confidentially, deeply – not just exchanging phrases in a meeting. He doesn't speak to his other ministers either. He doesn't read newspapers, magazines or blogs. He's not in the Commons. He doesn't make uplifting speeches. At the recent cabinet away day at Chequers he delighted ministers present by explaining why he was in politics. But it was their surprise, even relief, that was eloquent. What he said was the down-to-earth, autobiographical account an averagely egotistical prime minister would repeat while asleep. This curiously closed man seems surrounded by other politicians and advisers who can explain him better than he can. The downsides of his behaviour are by now well understood. The New Statesman has been charting the problem of dropping policies well before you have won the argument about them; of having no personal relationship with MPs on whom your legislation depends; of failing to develop an emotional connection with voters when your enemies can. Another downside, largely unreported, is an atmosphere of distancing and thinking beyond Starmer inside the cabinet. This is not, I must emphasise, a 'leadership plot'. We must move beyond the clichés. One senior minister says: 'There is no active conversation going on, but a lot of us are looking at the restlessness of the party and we think it's serious.' There are two obvious crisis points ahead after the summer break. One comes next May with the Scottish, Welsh and English local elections. If Labour is absolutely hammered up and down the country, Starmer's leadership will come into question. Scotland is probably going to go better than the commentators expect – the best result in 20 years, predicts one insider. The more serious challenge doesn't yet have a date attached: that is the possibility of a Truss-style market meltdown sufficient to destroy Rachel Reeves' chancellorship. Her frustration with Labour critics who don't understand how close to the edge the British economy stands, is completely understandable. Long-dated UK gilt yields (5.5 per cent last week) are already at levels not seen since 1998. For a lot of public debt, repayments recur frequently. Government sources worry about the 'extraordinary' lack of a senior economic policy adviser in No 10, which leaves the Treasury to itself while Downing Street is 'constantly racking up the bills'. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The bond markets are watching all the stuttering, over-indebted 'advanced' (aka sclerotic) economies like vultures. In the eurozone, France is in obvious trouble. But there is a particular focus on Britain, and not just because of Liz Truss and not just for technical reasons. After the U-turn on welfare cuts, the markets are asking whether this Labour government is really in control. Will it be forced to come back for substantial new borrowing? These are the big questions ahead of the Autumn Budget. They go a long way towards explaining the removal of the whip from rebels. If Starmer and Reeves are really committed, as the Prime Minister says, to lifting the two-child cap, there would have to be major spending cuts elsewhere, or tax rises, to compensate. In all this, Wes Streeting's fight with the resident doctors has become the political front line. It's lucky that he is the best political explainer, by far, the government has. Reeves has possible tweaks to make which could bring her up to £15bn extra and is doubtless looking at other moves: a banking levy and a gambling tax. But without tight spending control, that is all loose change – and she would have to turn to the big tax promises made at the election. Bringing investment income into line with income tax, as Angela Rayner has suggested, would be a possible answer, though that too has consequences for growth. Tony Blair, whose influence over the government grows by the day, has been bringing in groups of Labour MPs to warn them that if Reeves raises the big taxes in November 'it's over'. As one senior adviser says: 'The more you borrow, the less control you have over your destiny.' How close are we, then, to 1976, when the UK was unable to service its debts and needed an IMF bailout? I think of Jim Callaghan speaking to the Labour conference that year: 'We used to think you could spend your way out of a recession… by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you, in all candour, that that option no longer exists.' That isn't, yet, the speech that Starmer is planning. He intends to build on the spending review to chart a more optimistic year ahead, with waiting lists down, houses going up, and trade deals bringing better jobs, with a distinct community-first tone. The danger is that it sounds insufficiently confrontational, just when the markets are watching most closely. Downing Street is not complacent: one source talks of the difficulty of governing with an enfeebled state, one that is 'fat, not fit', a machine that seems 'too weak to lift a bin in Birmingham; to pick up the phone in a GP's office; to stop sewage flowing into rivers'. This inheritance will take time to turn around. In the short term, there needs to be an urgent challenge to the party about its priorities, as well as self-congratulation about the things that have gone well. The Labour Growth Group's call for a 'National Renewal Compact', recently published online by the New Statesman, is a sign of the serious thinking about Britain's challenges being done on the back benches. Mark McVitie, Lola McEvoy and Chris Curtis argue that Britain is facing a 'revolutionary moment'. The language is stark. Inside government, there is no longer an assumption that both Starmer and Reeves will survive. Angela Rayner, while the most obvious successor, is said not to want the top job for personal reasons. She is regarded as loyal to Starmer. Others doubt this. 'She always gives the impression of someone who does want the top job; she is very important, very political,' says another minister. If, to use Boris Johnson's phrase, the ball came loose from the scrum, we would probably see some kind of alliance between Wes Streeting, Bridget Phillipson and perhaps Shabana Mahmood – Mahmood representing the most right-of-centre, state-sceptical part of the party. The only other name being mentioned is John Healey, the Defence Secretary, seen as the safest hands in the administration, and a man who could Callaghan-style calm markets and backbenches alike. So, finally, we return to this oddest of prime ministers. His disdain for ordinary politics, his lack of real conversation with colleagues, and his arm's-length relationship with a commentariat are also a kind of strength which we have not perhaps taken seriously enough. He has the hide of a rhinoceros. Starmer doesn't, to switch jungle metaphors, give a monkey's about most of the criticism. He can listen – and he is refreshing Downing Street, importing badly needed experience of governing. Pat McFadden is likely to be given, I'm told, an enhanced political role at the centre. The former Blair-era spinner Tim Allan has been approached as communications supremo. The fundamental question, however, is about the real state of the country. Plenty of ministers believe we are on the edge of something pretty grim. As the summer stretches on, there is a general sense that the state is losing control of the streets – and Nigel Farage is watching, with one nicotine-tinted finger on the national pulse. The Prime Minister does not think the country is broken, and from the City to the universities, from science to new technology, there is plenty to celebrate. Calm and resilience are great political strengths. But we are living through a social and economic Dunkirk. Business as usual won't cut it. [See also: Kemi Badenoch isn't working] Related
New Statesman
23-07-2025
- Business
- New Statesman
Can Rachel Reeves avoid a new fiscal crisis?
Photo by Jack Hill -Many British governments enter office vowing 'never again'. In Rachel Reeves' case the promise was that the country would never again endure the economic turmoil that Liz Truss subjected it to. To justify this boast, one of her first acts was to pass a bill strengthening the powers of the (now maligned) Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). Yet the charge levelled at the Chancellor is precisely that Britain faces a return to Truss-style instability. This doesn't emanate only from Conservatives desperate for political revenge on Labour. 'Our finances are precarious, we've seen that in the past few weeks,' Gary Smith, the general secretary of the GMB (Reeves' own union), told me when I interviewed him for this week's NS. 'We are beholden to the bond markets; this could unravel very quickly.' Helen Thompson, the Cambridge professor of political economy, who sits on the advisory board of the Labour Together think tank, warns that 'there's a real risk there could be a crisis quite quickly because of the situation with the bond markets'. The air is thick with invocations of 1976 – the year when the plummeting value of the pound forced Jim Callaghan's Labour government to accept a £2.3bn bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Is this justified? Here are the facts: the UK, as the OBR recently warned, has the sixth-highest debt, fifth-highest deficit and third-highest borrowing costs among advanced economies. In June, the government recorded the second-highest borrowing figure since monthly records began in 1993 (exceeded only by the pandemic-afflicted month of June 2020). The markets are tolerant of indebted states that have a clear plan to reduce their borrowing. But the question that bond vigilantes are asking is whether Labour does. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe A one-year-old government with a landslide Commons majority has been forced to U-turn on relatively minor savings: £1.5bn from means-testing winter fuel payments and £5bn from cutting health and disability benefits (public spending stands at £1.3trn a year). In these circumstances tax would normally take the strain but Reeves has ruled out raising those taxes that account for two thirds of revenue: income tax, National Insurance (on employees), VAT and corporation tax. This leaves her with a much smaller menu of taxes on wealth – which investors fear will further depress economic growth. Here is the 'doom loop' that critics fear Britain is trapped in. Is there a route out? Reeves is increasingly confident in facing down those who argue that inflexibility is her greatest weakness and that she should loosen her fiscal rules. There is, she recently told the cabinet, 'nothing progressive in paying £1 in every £10 to US hedge funds' (a message she repeated yesterday during her appearance before the House of Lords' Economic Affairs Committee). Reeves' allies argue that her recent tears during Prime Minister's Questions served an inadvertent purpose. 'It was a reminder that she's trusted by the markets for a reason because people think she is sincere about keeping a grip on the finances,' one told me of the negative market reaction to speculation over the Chancellor's future. But continued trust may come at a price: the narrow fiscal headroom of £9.9bn that Reeves maintained last time, bond vigilantes warn, is not enough: they would like something closer to £20bn. Yet Labour aides insist that 'the manifesto stands' and will not be broken in pursuit of this goal. Here, then, is the question that Reeves may be forced to answer at the Budget: what happens when the irresistible force of the markets meets the immovable object of her tax pledges? [See also: Has Zarah Sultana already been sidelined from her new party?] Related
The National
02-06-2025
- Politics
- The National
I'm concerned about the SNP's strategy for Hamilton by-election
Considering the SNP claim to currently have around 60,000 members, the 100 or so folk (and customary cute dug) on parade represented a pretty disappointing turnout. Of course the SNP had more than 120,000 members in the days before Nicola Sturgeon and Humza Yousaf. Considering that around 50% of the electorate claim to support Scottish independence, I hope the ratio of independence supporters to actual SNP voters at Thursday's by-election is a lot better than this. The turnout will be important and will help decide the eventual winner. READ MORE: Scottish Labour councillor defects to Reform UK I am both concerned and fascinated by the strategy that seems to be driving the SNP's campaign. Instead of leading on the positive case for independence, which already enjoys 50% support, John Swinney has been promoting the negative idea that Labour have already lost and their supporters should vote SNP just to keep Reform UK from winning the seat. This is a very dangerous strategy. There is a serious chance that some Labour voters will see Reform, and not the SNP, as their second choice. The bookmaker's odds on Reform winning the seat have shortened from 10/1 to 4/1. The SNP have everything to lose. Reform will claim even a moderate increase in their vote as a victory. John Baird Largs I THINK the SNP must put indy first in 2026 for two reasons. 1. It would virtually guarantee a win for the party. 2. It would show the world the desire is still there. I know we would have to win in a Westminster election, so that General Election vote would be confirming the 2026 result. If SNP don't do something major on indy, they will pay a heavy price for decades. It's time to act. I hope the party gets it but I have my doubts. They don't want to mention it. Bill Robertson Fife READ MORE: I was blocked from asking Keir Starmer a question. This is what I wanted to say SO, Starmer thought he'd been given a political gift horse after Farage decided to veer away from the ranting gripe-fest that has made him popular and actually comment on economics. The PM said Farage's policies would create a huge deficit (£50-80 billion) with Truss-style chaos. My question would be – who does Starmer think is listening, among the rabid anti-migrant ranks (the ones he's been openly courting)? These are folk who were happy to trash the entire economy for a blue passport and some xenophobia. Starmer's gift horse is a political turkey – like the one Brexiters voted for… Amanda Baker Edinburgh THANK to Robin McAlpine for taking our Scottish Government and its processes to task (All the reasons why approving Flamingo Land's plan is wrong, May 27). Can I add a wee bit to the arguments? Robin failed to mention one of the 'voices behind the throne' – Scottish Enterprise. The 'arm's length' government body renewed its exclusivity agreement with Flamingo Land (for the second time) just in time for the developer to lodge its appeal at the end of December last year. However, Scottish Enterprise seems to be a law unto itself AND has no remit to consider communities or our environment. Willie Oswald Blanefield RECENT statements by Bono and Thom Yorke condemning Benjamin Netanyahu's government as extreme are welcome, but come far too late to carry moral weight. The extremism in question has been entrenched for years – in law, in policy, and in the lived experiences of Palestinians subjected to blockade, occupation, and systemic violence. To speak up only after catastrophe has unfolded is not moral courage; it is moral caution. Thom Yorke's questioning of why Hamas has not released all remaining hostages is similarly misjudged. It fails to reckon with the parallel reality of Israel's own extrajudicial detentions: namely, thousands of Palestinians held without charge or trial, many of them children, activists, or people merely caught in the gears of occupation. Calls for accountability must run in both directions if they are to carry credibility. READ MORE: Nigel Farage denies Gaza genocide and backs weapons exports to Israel The goal must not be a mere halt to hostilities that locks in injustice with a quieter tone. A political stand-off where we say 'we've gone too far, let's just stay here' would condemn future generations to a fragile, poisoned peace. What's needed is something more demanding and transformative: – the safe return of all hostages and detainees held without due process, regardless of nationality; – the dismantling of illegal settlements and a full withdrawal from occupied Palestinian territory; – international reparative investment to rebuild the homes, hospitals, water systems, and lives shattered by siege and bombardment; – and most crucially, a truth and reconciliation process, grounded in justice, equality, and shared humanity. Only this kind of reckoning can break the cycle of vengeance and ideology. And only a peace unsullied by religious nationalism – of any and all hues – can be called just. Ron Lumiere via email
Daily Mirror
31-05-2025
- Business
- Daily Mirror
Farage would plunge UK into 'Liz Truss doom loop' - 10 times he praised ex-PM
The Reform UK leader has repeatedly heaped praise upon the former Tory PM - whose disastrous mini-budget crashed the economy and sent mortgages spiralling Nigel Farage would lock Britain into a "Truss-style doom loop", Labour warned last night. The Reform UK leader has repeatedly heaped praise upon the former Tory PM - whose disastrous mini-budget crashed the economy and sent mortgages spiralling. And today Labour' chair Ellie Reeves accused Reform of plotting £80billion of unfunded spending commitments - and said Mr Farage's poor judgement was "crystal clear." "Praising Liz Truss once could have been a mistake," she told the Mirror. "But the evidence shows he's a Trussite and now wants to inflict her economic chaos on Britain once again." On the day of Ms Truss' mini-budget, September 23 2022, Mr Farage declared it "the best Conservative budget since 1986." And even a year on - after the full damage caused by the mini-budget was clear, Mr Farage continued to praise its architect. "I absolutely, 100% believe in her," he declared in an article about an event she held at the 2023 Tory conference. He said there was much to "admire" about Ms Truss not being afraid to "fight for radical change". And as recently as May, he failed to include Ms Truss in a list of Tory leaders who "broke Britain" in a Reform party leaflet. Ms Reeves added: "It turns out the only way Reform want to reform our economy is by locking us into a Truss-style doom loop, with working people picking up the bill." 10 times Nigel Farage praised Liz Truss 'Today was the best Conservative budget since 1986' - X, 23 September 2022. 'This is the Great British growth rally, starring Liz Truss ... there is a genuine buzz here ... even more importantly, it's the message. It's about helping small business, reducing taxes, and actually getting growth ... I've got to tell you, this is more exciting than anything happening in the conference hall - Youtube, 2 October 2023. 'I absolutely, 100 per cent believe in her', said Nigel Farage, speaking about Liz Truss at Tory Party Conference in 2023 - Telegraph, 2 October 2023. 'In rhetorical terms, I loved it…it was all there…if this was the first, not the thirteenth year of Conservative government, I would have given it three cheers', Farage wrote about one of Liz Truss' speeches as Prime Minister - Telegraph, 5 October 2022. Mr Farage said, of Truss's mini-budget, "Kwarteng was right to cut taxes. Of course, he was right. Right to set up investments zones…and yes, taking a risk - increasing borrowing to do it.' - Express, 29 September 2022. 'Thank goodness Liz Truss now backs onshore gas exploration. She is miles better than Johnson already" - X, 8 April 2022. 'Interesting Daily Mail campaign on VAT-free shopping for tourists. Kwasi wanted to do that. He and Truss did have some good ideas' - X, 24 April 2023. 'Farage said there was much to 'admire' about how Truss was not afraid to 'fight for radical change' ... I think this woman has shown - in some areas - she is prepared to show up, take the abuse and fight for radical change and that I do admire.' - HuffPost, 2 October 2023. 'Truss may well have been a late convert to all of this but hey that's what she stood up and said so I welcomed much of the budget.' - YouTube, 8 February 2023. Failed to include Liz Truss in a list of Tory leaders who 'broke Britain', suggesting he backs her disastrous policy platform - HuffPost, 13 May 2025.
