LONDON – It is not a merry Easter for Keir Starmer. Along with the religious anniversary, the 58-year-old Labor leader celebrates his first year leading an opposition party since 2010, but has ben little to celebrate. On the level of faith, because in his house one follows the religion of his wife, which he has already observed Pesach, Passover, two weeks ago. And on the political level, because the polls they give him in decline, his party challenges him and some newspapers even speculate that he could be disheartened before the next elections, scheduled for 2024. It is not certain that it will end like this and could have opportunities to rehabilitate himself, but certainly this is not the case. the trajectory that many foresaw twelve months ago, starting with himself.
London, the turning point of the progressives: bar in the center for Labor
by Enrico Franceschini
“A serious man for serious times”: presented so by the British media, a year ago Starmer was indeed became Labor leader amid high expectations. There was no doubt that he was serious: a lawyer specialized in human rights and then an inflexible chief prosecutor in the fight against crime and terrorism (for this reason Queen Elizabeth named him “sir”, knight), he appeared precise, determined and concrete in the first verbal duels in parliament with Boris Johnson, known more for its gaffes than for its clarity. And that the times were serious the pandemic was proving, creating here as elsewhere the most serious crisis since the Second World War, to which the pitfalls of post-Brexit were added in the United Kingdom. The prime minister did not seem up to the task. Great Britain was embarking on the spiral that would have led it to have more infections and more victims than any other country in Europe. It was Johnson, a year ago, who felt his own wobble armchair; and Starmer might think that sooner or later he would have stolen it.
Biden-Starmer, the new progressive way
by Maurizio Molinari
After four years of Jeremy Corbyn, which culminated in two electoral defeats, the second – in December 2019 – destined to remain in the archives as the worst in the last 90 years, the Labor party hoped to have found the right man for redemption. Pragmatic, but not necessarily Blairite, progressive, but certainly not corbyniano, the new leader he promised to unite the party, present a credible government program and make people forget the stain of anti-Semitic accusations that had contributed to the failure of his predecessor. In November, the election to the White House of a reformist president such as Joe Biden it gave the impression that a center-left axis between Washington and London could be reborn after the years of Trumpism. And opinion polls confirmed Starmer’s excellent satisfaction popular.
Last June, the survey by the Ipsos Mori institute gave it an index of +31 per cent, the highest achieved by a British opposition leader since the company began collecting statistics of this kind in 1970. the index had dropped to a still respectable +15. But now it has gone negative, at -9, e other polls put the Conservative party back in the lead, after chasing Labor for much of the first phase of the pandemic.
Precisely the fight against Covid-19 partly explains the decline in support for Starmer. Premier Johnson was very wrong until the fall in dealing with the coronavirus, but then he guessed it all in the vaccination campaign, giving this country the firstto European in the largest number of inoculations. The return to normal has already begun and, if the schedule is respected, it will be complete in June with the end of the lockdown restrictions. A card that allowed the leader of the Tories to rehabilitate and put Starmer in trouble.
The pandemic, however, is not the soil problem of the Labor leader. There firmness with which he moved against anti-Semitism, going so far as to suspend Corbyn from the party, antagonizing the most radical wing. A’initiative to emphasize patriotism as one of the founding values of Labor, while necessary to win back voters who had turned away considering Corbyn unpatriotic, the ha reso difficult to criticize the conservative party that expresses similar values. Peter Mandelson, ex-teacher at Tony Blair, called by Starmer for giving advice behind the scenes, criticized him for lacking a program and a vision of the future. Its deputies are divided between those who would like to avoid internal divisions and those who would like to permanently wipe out any legacy of the Corbyn era. And while his experience as a lawyer and prosecutor at times allows him to deal a few hits in the Wednesday duels in the House of Commons, Starmer exhibits a gap that was known even before he became a leader: an obvious lack of charisma. He is certainly not, from this point of view, a new Blair. Maybe he can’t even compete with Johnson.
For all these reasons, on Easter Saturday the Times reveals growing dissensions between Starmer and Angela Rayner, vice-leader laburista, predicting that, if Labor does badly in the local elections and the by-election in May, a maneuver could even be launched to discourage him and replace him with someone else. Yeah, but with whom? In the Corbyn succession party primaries a year ago, no person of caliber had emerged except sir Keir. And the pollsters, to console him, remember that too David Cameron, a year after he became leader of the opposition, he had suffered a collapse in consensus: yet, after another two years, he became prime minister, bringing the Conservatives back to power after thirteen long years of Labor rule. Now it is Labor that has been in the opposition for a long time: gives eleven years to be precise. In politics, things change quickly and the star of Starmer could shine again between now and the 2024 elections. But the balance of his first birthday as a leader is full of unknowns.
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