Sir Keir Starmer elected new Labour Party leader

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Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to lead Labour "into a new era with confidence and hope" after decisively winning the contest to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.

The 57-year old defeated Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey in a ballot of party members and other supporters.

Angela Rayner has been elected deputy
leader...

New Labour leader Keir Starmer vows to lead party into 'new era'


BBC News
4 April 2020

Sir Keir Starmer has vowed to lead Labour "into a new era with confidence and hope" after decisively winning the contest to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.

The 57-year old defeated Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey in a ballot of party members and other supporters.

The lawyer, who became an MP in 2015, won on the first round of voting, with more than 50% of ballots cast.

After his victory, Sir Keir spoke to PM Boris Johnson and agreed to meet next week to discuss the coronavirus crisis.

In a video message released by the Labour Party, Sir Keir promised to work constructively in opposition and said he hoped Labour "when the time comes can serve our country again - in government".

And he apologised for the "stain" of anti-Semitism that has tainted Labour in recent years. He pledged to "tear out this poison by its roots" and said his success would be judged on whether former Jewish members return to Labour.

The full results of the leadership contest were:

Sir Keir Starmer - 275,780 votes (56.2%)
Rebecca Long-Bailey - 135,218 votes (27.6%)
Lisa Nandy - 79,597 votes (16.2%)

Just over 490,000 people voted, out of the 784,151 eligible to take part in the three-month contest triggered by Mr Corbyn's decision to step down after Labour's heavy defeat in last year's general election.

Sir Keir won a majority in every section of Labour's selectorate, including 78% of the 13,000 registered supporters who paid a one-off £25 fee to take part.

Coronavirus crisis

Meanwhile, shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner has been elected deputy leader, replacing Tom Watson, who stood down as an MP before the election. She defeated four other candidates but the contest was much closer, going to a third round of voting.

The 40-year old Ms Rayner beat Rosena Allin-Khan and Richard Burgon in a third round of voting, after fellow MPs Ian Murray and Dawn Butler had earlier been eliminated.

Saturday's result was announced by e-mail after plans for a public event were dropped due to the coronavirus crisis.

Sir Keir has described himself as a socialist but not a Corbynite, and vowed to keep key policies from the Corbyn era, such as nationalising rail, mail and water and repealing anti-union laws, in a 10-point plan.

The MP for Holborn and St Pancras, in London, had been the odds-on favourite to win the contest, having received the backing of more MPs and local Labour branches than his rivals as well as significant union support.

He led the Crown Prosecution Service before entering frontline politics. He served in Mr Corbyn's top team for more than three years where he was responsible for the party's Brexit policy.

His two rivals paid tribute to him, Mrs Long-Bailey saying he would be make "brilliant prime minister" and she "would do all she could to make that a reality".

Ms Nandy said she was proud of her campaign and offered Labour's new leader her "full support in the challenges that lie ahead". "Our country is crying out for fresh leadership. We start today."

'Constructive opposition'

Sir Keir's first task will be to lead Labour's response to the coronavirus emergency, and he has accepted an invitation to take part in cross-party talks with the prime minister and the government's top scientific advisers next week, to "work together" on the crisis.

He has already spoken to England's Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and Simon Stevens, the chief executive of NHS England, about the current situation.

Sir Keir said he had been elected "at a moment like no other" and promised to work "constructively" with the government to confront the pandemic and not engage in "opposition for opposition's sake".

But he added: "We will shine a torch on critical issues and where we see mistakes or faltering government or things not happening as quickly as they should we'll challenge that and call that out.

"Our purpose when we do that is the same as the government's, to save lives and to protect our country."

Mr Corbyn congratulated his successor and said he looked forward to working with him to "elect the next Labour government and transform our country".

Other prominent Labour figures have welcomed Sir Keir's decisive victory, with former leader Ed Miliband saying "his decency, values and intelligence are what our country needs at this time of crisis".

Labour MP David Lammy, who backed Sir Keir's candidacy, said he was "ecstatic" about the outcome.

Angela Rayner has been elected deputy leader

Outgoing shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who backed Ms Long-Bailey, urged the party to "unite now as a movement to achieve our socialist aim".

Sir Keir received an early boost after his supporters won effective control of Labour's National Executive Committee, the party's ruling body, following a series of separate elections.

The BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg said Sir Keir's team had not been expecting a clean sweep and it would make it much easier for him to run the party and make any changes he wanted.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52164589

 

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When the chips are down, the socialist, feminist, Islamist Labour Party vote for a straight white male to lead them to victory. Jeremy Corbyn is out, Keir Starmer is in, and clearly it is the patriarch who will bring about true socialism!

 

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As tho' Britain isn't socialistic enough already. The policies of the past were not very good and look where that's gotten Brits - Hopefully, things will improve under Johnson but I'm not holding my breath. Politics worldwide seem to be in a huge mess!! Socialism will not "save" the world - it will simply make it worse, especially for those already under the thumb of tyrants. Rather than raising them up, they insist on bringing the rest down to their level - in other words, make us all poorer. Quite disgusting really.

 

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He was the Shadow Brexit Secretary who, bizarrely for someone in that office, is anti-Brexit.

 

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#KeirStarmer's #Labour Party is an absolute shambles. Recently leaked report aside, he has assembled a collection of incompetent buffoons who masquerade as informed politicians and universally opposed #Brexit. The public gaffes of Emily Thornberry, Jess Phillips, David Lammy, Ed Milliband and Nas Shah read like a who's who of Labour mistakes over the past decade.

 

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Voters will not forget Labour’s Brexit betrayal

Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet of Remoaners is shocking but not surprising.

PADDY HANNAM
17th April 2020
Spiked

Labour leader Keir Starmer says the battle over Brexit has ended. But the appointments to his top team would suggest he really feels otherwise. For the post of shadow chancellor, he chose Annelise Dodds, an ex-MEP – someone so devoted to the EU project that she went to Brussels to be a part of it. For international trade, Emily Thornberry got the nod. Thornberry notoriously wore a dress and necklace combo resembling the EU flag at a People’s Vote rally last year. In the last election, she nauseatingly competed with her Lib Dem rival in Islington South and Finsbury to be the most pro-Remain candidate.

But perhaps taking the cake is the new position afforded to David Lammy. Remember, this is a man so unabashedly pro-EU that he came out with the unhinged claim that the European Research Group – the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party – was made up of racists who are ‘worse than the Nazis’. He later said his remarks were not strong enough. He is now Labour’s offering for the Ministry of Justice. I would be scared if he ever took office. Presumably, in his dreams, hardline Brexiteers would be locked up for hate speech.

The natural reaction to all this is to ask why on Earth has Labour made such crazy appointments? The new shadow cabinet undermines Starmer’s claim to be moving the party on from its disastrous Brexit nightmare. But the decisions Starmer himself has made are themselves not the most revealing thing.

The more important issue reflected by the shadow-cabinet picks is that there is hardly anybody left in the Parliamentary Labour Party who is in favour of leaving the EU. The sole remaining Labour MP who campaigned to leave is Graham Stringer. Most of the last bastions of left-wing Euroscepticism in the House of Commons have either retired or been hounded out. There is no more Kate Hoey, John Mann or Frank Field. And, sadly, no more Dennis Skinner, who lost his Bolsover seat in December, in no small part due to his party’s disastrous Brexit policy.

True, many of the Labour Eurosceptics were already in the twilight of their parliamentary careers. These were veterans who were unlikely to join frontline politics at this late stage. But even this is a reflection of Labour’s total failure to comprehend and represent left-wing, pro-Leave sentiment – once a mainstream view in the party. Stringer said at a recent conference that when he got the nomination to stand as a Labour candidate, being Eurosceptic was a necessary condition of getting the spot. Today, being anti-Brexit seems to be the most important qualification for young Labourites.

Some will say that Brexit is over now, so what does it matter? Yes, we have technically left the EU (though the trade talks continue). And indeed, recent circumstances have demonstrated how even something as seismic as Brexit can be made to look unimportant, at least temporarily. But the truth is that the voters who Labour abandoned and betrayed will not soon forget. The likes of Emily Thornberry will be remembered for the anti-democratic policy they promoted, even when Brexit itself is not the issue of the day.

Labour is counting on Brexiteer voters to revert back to their original political home. But when constituencies that have returned Labour MPs since their formation finally switched allegiance at the last election, they did not do so on a whim. People tend to switch parties when they have found an option they feel better represents them, and there is no reason to believe that Starmer’s Labour Party will better represent ex-Labour voters than Corbyn’s team. A Labour Party which is doing little to set itself apart from its Remoaner past, and is eating itself alive with factional infighting, is not likely to be an attractive prospect.

Moreover, as I have previously argued on spiked, Brexit is not a lone wolf. It is a manifestation of a wider shift taking place in British society and politics (and, to some degree, overseas). As such, the questions raised by Brexit cannot be simply or easily overcome by relegating the EU question to a less prominent position in our minds.

Labour is in denial, but its old voters are not. At present, the party’s left is blaming its right for its election defeats, and vice versa. But many of its traditional voters simply do not care anymore. Sometimes, you have to leave a problematic organisation or arrangement to see how far the rot has really set in. Like a failed relationship or a toxic work situation, it can be hard to appreciate the scale of the problem until you have broken free and can reflect in the cold light of day. And so for many ex-Labour voters, now looking at their old party from the outside for the first time, the problems seem as great as ever.

Paddy Hannam is a writer. Follow him on Twitter: @paddyhannam

Picture by: Getty.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/04/17/voters-will-not-forget-labours-brexit-betrayal/