The head of the Labor ranks is the candidate to end another long Conservative era if, as it appears, Sunak cannot consolidate his leadership in the UK
The last time the Labor Party snatched government from the Conservatives, their victory was overwhelming. The ‘Tory’ John Major suffered a defeat comparable only to that of his party nearly a century earlier, in 1906. New Labor leader Tony Blair, who perfumed the roses that adorned his public events, was the new prime minister: young , laughing and ambiguous.
On the evening of May 1, 1997, he and his co-religionists celebrated their victory by singing their campaign song “Things Can Only Get Better” to techno-pop dance music by the group D. : Ream on a raised stage outside the Royal Festival Hall. Optimism had gripped the political left after nearly two decades of the Conservative era that Margaret Thatcher began in 1979.
The polls are now leading to comparisons with what happened in 1997 and speculation about another landslide victory for Labor under Sir Keir Starmer. According to Sir John Curtice, an expert in interpreting polls and election results, “The general public has decided they cannot trust the Conservatives to run the country”.
Another episode from those years indicates that Starmer cannot be sure of victory. Major succeeded Margaret Thatcher in 1990 and achieved ratification of the Maastricht Treaty despite hostility from Eurosceptics. The party was bitterly divided over Thatcher’s impeachment and there was an economic recession. But Major won the April 1992 election with the highest number of votes in British electoral history.
Six months after an extraordinary victory, Major and his government were humiliated. They lost a costly battle with the capital markets to prop up the pound on the ERM. Eurosceptics found the perfect excuse to continue their attempt to oust Major and the party lost the traditional public faith in better management of the economy.
Will the new Conservative leader, Rishi Sunak, be able to match John Major and mobilize Conservative voters in the next two years? His abstinence was key to Blair’s landslide victory, and now troubles the Tories in the polls and local elections. Will it be a national humiliation, in Liz Truss’ short-lived tenure, to weigh too heavily on the Tories in 2024 as it was for Major in 1997?
Keir Starmer was born 60 years ago in London, but grew up in a town in the south of England. His father, Rodney, worked in a tool factory and his mother, Josephine, was a nurse, although she spent much of her life in care. He suffered from Still’s disease, an inflammatory arthritis, for half a century. Starmer has acknowledged that he had a distant relationship with his father, something he regrets.
He studied law at the University of Leeds and then at Oxford. As in the case of Sunak, the Labor leader is recognized for his ability to work. His former colleagues at one of London’s most famous law firms remember him as a young man capable of great concentration when studying cases. He specialized in court cases in which Human Rights Law was interpreted.
He was appointed a prosecutor and entered politics in 2015 as an MP for a central London district, in the same neighborhood where he lives with his wife, also a barrister, and their two children. The family practices the Jewish religion, except for Keir Starmer. On one occasion he has said that as a teenager he would have preferred his parents to name him David rather than Keir, in homage to the first leader of the Labor Party.
He is accused by politicians and media of being indirectly responsible for Boris Johnson’s hard Brexit. Starmer, charged with overseeing European Union advancement policy in the opposition cabinet led by Jeremy Corbyn, is said to have refused to agree to a more favorable deal between Theresa May and the EU, insisting on the celebration of a second referendum when the exit agreement was known.
The ‘Corbynists’ also blame him for causing the electoral defeat in December 2019, as his insistence on another consultation would have prevented the left leader from winning back Labor voters. Starmer has now ruled out another referendum on the European issue and has purged the party and parliamentary group of Corbyn supporters. The former leader was expelled, accused of anti-Semitism.
Becoming leader of the opposition with five years until the next election and with a government enjoying a comfortable majority is a thankless task. Starmer has delivered without fanfare, but is often accused of being a dull speaker. After revamping his team of advisers to focus on the election, the sarcasm about rivals has improved and the speech is more aggressive.
He sponsors British training to curb immigration, he is a convinced Atlanticist and at the last annual conference he managed to get party members to sing the national anthem. There’s something in him of Blair’s ideological ambiguity, but he’s never proposed, as Starmer does, creating a state bank to fund an intensive green energy plan. He still has a difficult task ahead of him: to convince a population that feels things are getting worse that things can only get better.
Source: La Verdad
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