Category Archives: keir starmer

Can Keir Starmer Learn From Johnson’s Message Discipline?

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The long-lens of Downing Street snapper Steve Back has caught out many people over the years. Today, he captured a rare image of the “lines to take” briefing notes used by the PM’s official spokesman in his encounters with political journalists.

And this particular document was all about Dominic Cummings. Given that one of Cummings’ arguments is that Boris Johnson is too obsessed with newspaper headlines, there was some measure of irony in seeing No.10′s stonewalling defence against his criticisms.

To be fair, the note correctly anticipated media interest in Cummings’ latest claims that the PM ‘lacks focus’, doesn’t care about the Union, governs like ‘a pundit who stumbled into politics’ and runs an administration summed up as ‘the blind leading the blind’.

What was striking was that the answer to every single question was the same: we’re not going to engage with every allegation made, and anyway “the PM is entirely focused on recovering from the pandemic, moving through the roadmap, distributing vaccines and delivering on the public’s priorities”.

Now of course it’s blatant baloney to claim the PM is entirely focused on the pandemic, not least as he not too long ago took time out to ring newspaper editors to blame Cummings for leaks against him. It also lacks credibility to claim, as Matt Hancock did on Radio 4 this morning, that the government was delivering on the PM’s promise on social care.

But Hancock, just like No.10, does know the merit of repeating again and again the same political position. The government had delivered Brexit, delivered on its pledge to protect the NHS, delivered on its programme for vaccines.

One can pick apart each element of that formulation: the Brexit brake on trade with the EU is a sleeper problem that businesses and individuals in both Britain and Northern Ireland are waking up to; the NHS didn’t collapse but the cost in lives and frontline trauma has been huge; the vaccine delivery is really the NHS’s triumph not Johnson’s.

Yet each element definitely has a ‘delivery’ bonus that is proving highly popular with the public, as the latest polls show (SavantaComRes has the Tories increasing their lead over Labour to a whopping 14 points). With every single voter directly affected by the vaccination programme, its success has an impact like no other public policy in living memory, with massive goodwill on its side.

Still, the Conservatives’ handling of what new Labour used to call “message discipline” is also having an impact. By contrast, Keir Starmer has struggled with that very concept over the past six months. Micro-policies have come and gone, and lines-to-take have too.

Those who know him well will admit that his lawyer’s brain finds it difficult to parrot soundbites. He’s always keen to read an entire brief, then focus on crafting the right arguments rather than being ‘on message’.

In interviews, he struggles to stick to a line, partly because he finds it unnatural to speak like a politician. Yet as [George] ‘Bush’s brain’ Karl Rove once said, it’s only once journalists are heartily sick of the same soundbite that the public are probably just starting to listen.

However, the Labour leader has been disciplined of late in one area, on Johnson’s “lax borders” that allowed the Delta variant into the UK from India. And there are tentative signs that it is paying off. A new YouGov poll finds that 35% of people think the rise in Covid cases is the government’s fault, up from 28% in January. 45% still blame the rise on their fellow public, but that’s down from 58% in January.

There are other impacts of the Covid spike of course, and today there were figures showing nearly a quarter of a million pupils missed school because of outbreaks, the highest figure since kids went back in March. Add that to the lack of a funded plan for catch-up education and Starmer could deploy it in PMQs on Wednesday. Delays caused by the ‘Johnson variant’ are affecting jobs, schooling and travel abroad, he may argue.

As I’ve written before, the pitfall for Labour would be to be seen as almost wishing the cases to rise further, just to prove how right its analysis was of Johnson’s mistakes. The latest figures have the first glimmers of a plateauing of hospitalisations (particularly in London), so expect the PM to revive his own line-to-take of Starmer “talking the country down”. Similarly, Labour opposing all overseas travel may prove unpopular if double jabs can ‘save the summer’.

But MPs and aides from all wings of Labour want their man to punch harder. Those punches may land if he does indeed deliver the soundbites needed. Just as the government’s public health messages rely on repetition, an Opposition’s political health relies on effective comms. Words are all Starmer has, and they can help him prove he’s got the “focus” that Cummings claims the PM lacks.

There was one caveat in those No.10 briefing notes, which departed slightly from the script. Referring to the claim that Johnson runs a blind-leading-the-blind government, the PM’s spokesman was advised: “if pushed – we reject this characterisation”. That charge of lacking focus clearly worries Team Johnson.

Starmer’s problem ahead of the Batley by-election is that his own leadership is seen as the bland leading the bland. This summer, if the unlockdown goes well and Labour lose another northern seat, it won’t be the party’s message that dominates. It will be the message from the voters.

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Does Chesham And Amersham Show The Political Tectonic Plates Are Shifting?

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On the day of the Chesham and Amersham by-election on Thursday, one voter couldn’t quite believe just who was captured on the video on their ‘Ring’ doorbell. Theresa May, the former prime minister, was door-knocking in a last-ditch attempt to get the vote out. It looked desperate and it was.

In fact, May was already well known to the electorate precisely because her face had been plastered all over election leaflets. But she wasn’t on Tory campaign material, she was quoted on Lib Dem leaflets for her opposition to the planning reforms proposed by Boris Johnson. This was a 2021 redux of the 2017 classic, ‘the Maybot wot lost it’, but in a very different way.

It was those controversial planning reforms to build more homes without local consent, plus a vehement opposition to the HS2 rail line (embodied by building works currently causing road chaos in the seat), that created an overall narrative that the Conservatives were going to rip up the Chilterns countryside.

Add in the much bigger picture of Johnson’s constant focus on the ‘red wall’ of northern seats and the Lib Dems’ spectacular success was in sending a message that this seat was sick of being “taken for granted”. In that sense, and perhaps the only sense, the Home Counties upset mirrored Labour’s Hartlepool defeat a few weeks ago.

So in many ways, there were almost textbook conditions for a Lib Dem by-election upset. The seat was so close to London, a mere Metropolitan Line tube ride away, the party could easily flood it with activists. In HS2 and planning, there were two perfectly local issues to exploit. Crucially, this was also a classic sleeper operation, a LibDem ‘quiet revolt’ with the party deliberately not shouting about its progress to avoid alerting the sleepy Tories.

All the old tricks were deployed too. One Labour figure whose mother lives in the seat confided she’d told him how nice it was the Lib Dem candidate had actually sent her a personal, hand-written letter (even though it was pro-forma, and cleverly printed to look hand-written). Getting a candidate in place early, hiding the party’s national support for HS2, all worked.

Moreover, the Tory campaign was as inept as the Lib Dems’ was impressive. One Tory MP told me how the party had been far too slow to get a candidate, had produced ‘insipid’ leaflets (“Where was the image of the PM getting his vaccine jab? Nowhere.”) and crazily focused on swing voters rather than its core vote. Despite May’s last minute doorknocks, I was told the Tories didn’t even have tellers at polling stations for large parts of the day.

As one shrewd Lib Dem old hand told me, the genius of the party’s campaign was it managed to both attract the younger more liberal voters forced out of London by expensive house prices AND the older NIMBYs who don’t want the extra housing needed to support even more of these newcomers.

And while this was in many ways a classic, localised by-election win, the Lib Dems are hoping that they can capitalise more broadly in the south. It’s certainly true that anger over planning was a factor in the party capturing other seats in the local elections (there were literal ‘disgusted of Tunbridge Wells’ vote shifts over the issue in May)

But are the tectonic plates of our politics shifting? Well, the demographic shifts of an influx of younger, graduate class to Tory seats are reflected in other seats across the south. Some in Labour firmly believe that while they should shout more about successes in places like Peterborough, West of England and Worthing in May, the fact is in parliamentary seats it’s the Lib Dems who can capitalise most.

As one Labour insider put it to me, the long term trends are good but in the short term the number of marginal winnable seats for 2023/4 in the north and midlands far outweigh the potential gains of the odd upset like Canterbury. Others in the party see it as a comforting fantasy to believe that a hipster coffee shop appearing in a Tory town somehow signals a revolution.

Labour polled its lowest ever vote share of any by-election, with just 1.6% of the vote, but those around Keir Starmer were utterly relaxed, seeing that as the inevitable squeeze of tactical voting (it’s worth pointing out that under Corbyn, Richmond Park saw a lower vote score for Labour than membership of the local Labour party, precisely because voting Lib Dem removes a Tory).

“Keir didn’t go to Amersham and Chesham, we didn’t pour resources into it. We absolutely stepped back, actively said we are not keen to engage in this. So we stepped back and allowed that squeeze message to work,” one source said. If the party does the same at the next general election in seats where the Libs are the main challenger, it would simply be repeating the Blair-Ashdown tactics of 1997.

For some around Starmer, the big, tantalising prize after Chesham is that it shows not only are voters less tied than ever to party loyalty but also that the Tories can be routed if Labour isn’t seen by southern voters as a threatening presence in No.10.

I remember joining Johnson on the campaign trail in south west London in 2015 and he correctly predicted the anti-Lib Dem landslides in seats like Ed Davey’s and Vince Cable’s, partly because of a fear that Ed Miliband would ally with Alex Salmond.

Older Lib Dem-Tory switchers are at heart liberal conservatives but they are still conservatives. As academic Paula Surridge points out today, Tory Remain voters had a tremendously low opinion of Jeremy Corbyn.

Some Starmer supporters believe that’s the main reason he can never allow  himself to be depicted as ‘Miliband-lite’, let alone ‘Corbyn-lite’. He may currently have major problems with clarity for what he stands for (which have to be solved), but Starmer’s huge asset to date has been that he doesn’t scare those southern horses.

Johnson’s two biggest problems are complacency and confusion. Today, he appeared in west Yorkshire, clearly having anticipated a cakewalk victory in Chesham that he could use to help him in Batley and Spen. The date of the Batley by-election, July 1, was clearly also designed to be a victory lap after June 21’s unlocking. So much for complacency.

As for confusion, the PM today also started talking once more about uniting and levelling up because “that’s what One nation Conservatism is all about”. That unity message was certainly his line the morning after the 2019 election, but within days he squandered it with endless culture wars on the BBC, political reporters, the judiciary, even cuts to overseas aid.

One Nationism has instead been replaced by Two Nationism, and his messages to the ‘red wall’ have often conflicted with ‘blue wall’ values. It’s not just Labour that has difficulty keeping a working class and middle class voter coalition together.

Batley (which I’ll write more about soon) is a very different seat from Chesham. Still, some Tories think one read-across is they chose their candidate too late and are still failing to target the right voters. Starmer has a brilliantly local candidate, but faces ‘headwinds’ still from the vaccine rollout and George Galloway’s targeting Asian voters. 

The biggest lesson for both Starmer and Johnson is that it’s only by trying to unify the country, not split it into different groups or regions or coloured walls, that politicians can win big majorities. In a first past the post election system, that remains more important than demographic shifts or tweaks to campaigns. Oh, and never take your base for granted.

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Treasury ‘Suppressed’ Access To Furlough Payments For Workers Sick With Covid

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HANNAH MCKAY via Getty Images

Keir Starmer has hit out at claims that the government suppressed furlough funding for sick workers self-isolating at the height of the Covid pandemic.

The Labour leader waded into the row after it emerged that senior civil servants had complained that the Treasury was worried about publicising a relatively unknown provision in the furlough rules that allows temporary payments for staff forced to quarantine.

The Politico.eu website said it had seen emails, dated from January and February this year, showing that officials had complained about the failure to make employers and staff aware of the guidance.

“Furlough can be used to cover self-isolation, but [the Treasury] are reluctant to say this explicitly in guidance because it could lead to employees being furloughed who do not need to be,” one email read. “This is a live issue being worked through.”

One senior official explained in their complaint: “Incentive payments are too low to incentivise employees to take tests due to risk of loss of income.”

Both Downing Street and the Treasury insisted that the guidance was clear on the government’s own website that the furlough scheme had never been intended to be used as a substitute for statutory sick pay.

But Labour said the revelations were “shameful and reckless”, with Starmer adding he was “really concerned” about any suggestion of restricting cash help for home quarantine.

“One of the big issues for the 14 months or so we have been in the pandemic has been whether people feel that they can afford to self-isolate,” he told reporters during a visit to Airbus in Bristol.

“Self-isolation is a huge tool in the armoury when it comes to defeating the pandemic, but too many people felt that they couldn’t afford to self-isolate.

“We have been saying this for a year or more, so the idea now that this has been suppressed I think is so wrong in terms of how we fight this pandemic.”

Shadow Treasury minister Bridget Phillipson added: “It is shameful and reckless that the Chancellor ignored professional advice and put countless people and workplaces at unnecessary risk when he had the opportunity to help.”

The government guidance for firms makes clear that short-term illness or isolation “should not be a consideration when deciding if you should furlough an employee”.

But it adds: “If, however, employers want to furlough employees for business reasons and they are currently off sick, they are eligible to do so, as with other employees. In these cases, the employee should no longer receive sick pay and would be classified as a furloughed employee.”

Government sources said that the reason for the rules was that HM Revenue & Customs would have no mechanism or way of identifying those being furloughed for short term sickness, and it could open the whole scheme to fraud risk.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “The guidance on Gov.uk sets out that the furlough scheme is not intended for short-term absences from work due to sickness and self-isolation should not be a consideration when a business is deciding if a business should furlough an employee.”

A Treasury spokesperson added: “It has always been clear that the purpose of the furlough scheme is to support jobs – we’ve been upfront about that from the start.

“We have a specific support package in place for those self-isolating due to coronavirus, including £500 one off payments for those on low incomes.

“If an employer wants to furlough an employee for business reasons and they are currently off sick then they are eligible to do so as with other employees. This has been set out in guidance since April last year.”

Separately, Downing Street tried to play down reports that ministers would legislate to allow a legal right to work from home because of the pandemic.

“We’ve asked people to work from home where they can during the pandemic but there are no plans to make this permanent or introduce a legal right to work from home,” the PM’s spokesperson said.

“There’s no plans to make working from home permanent or introduce a legal right to work from home.”

But he added the government was committed in its manifesto to a possible default right to flexible working. “What we’re consulting on is making flexible working a default option, unless employers have good reasons not to.”

He defined flexible working as “a range of working arrangements around time, place and hours of work including part-time working, flexi-time or compressed hours” but not necessarily working from home.

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Why The Unite Election Has Lessons In Unity For Keir Starmer – And The Left

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“Two down, one to go.” That’s how a Labour MP reacted this week to the news that moderate Gary Smith was just elected to lead the GMB union. It was a reference to the fact that this year’s general secretary elections for the UK’s ‘big three’ trade unions – Unison, Unite and GMB – have seen two victories for candidates seen as friendly to Keir Starmer.

While Smith won the GMB contest on Thursday, earlier this year Christina McAnea saw off three more left-wing rivals in the battle to lead Unison. But although Unison is now the largest union in the country, it is the fight to succeed Len McCluskey that is seen as the race with the biggest prize. A clean sweep of ‘moderates’ would deliver for Starmer more union boss support than any Labour leader since the 1950s.

Of course, the contests are often more than a straight battle between ‘left’ and ‘right’. As a former Communist, McAnea is hardly a Blairite. She was however seen as the most pragmatic of the contenders for the Unison top job. Crucially, she also became the first female leader of a ‘big’ union, which was fitting given just how many women NHS, council and social care staff make up Unison’s membership.

Women make up more than half of the GMB’s membership and after an independent report found evidence of “institutional sexism” among its ranks, some had expected Rehana Azam to clinch the general secretary job. On his victory, Smith acknowledged the sexism findings and vowed to implement reforms. Still, some in the union claim the “women’s vote” was split after another candidate, Giovanna Holt, decided to stand.

In fact, “splitting the vote” is often a feature, whether deliberate or unintentional, of general secretary elections. Why? Because unlike virtually every other internal election (say Tory and Labour leader elections), they are run under first past the post rules. When McAnea won the Unison post, her vote was less than the combined total of the three leftwingers who stood against her.

And it’s that first past the post factor which is now very much in play in “the big one”, Unite. Centrist Gerard Coyne is up against three leftwing rivals (Steve Turner, Howard Beckett and Sharon Graham) and as a result could end up winning with less than half of the vote. As Turner conceded to me recently: “If we had the same turnout as last time, there ain’t enough votes to go round on a straight three-way [Left] split to defeat” Coyne.

Turnouts tend to be low in union elections (the GMB’s this week was just 10.6%, Unite’s last time was about 12%). That’s in part because the Conservative government has refused to allow online balloting (something that’s allowed in political party elections), partly because of a lack of public profile and partly apathy among union members.

But given the low turnouts, three Left candidates are often fishing in a small pool for the same votes. After Turner narrowly won last year the crucial nomination of the ‘United Left’ grouping in the union, Beckett opted to still stand. National organiser Graham was always going to stand in her own right too, which means the Left will indeed be split.

I understand that all four candidates now have enough branch nominations to formally stand as candidates. With the final deadline for nominations due on Monday, Coyne and Turner are holding back details for now, possibly to gain even more backing over this weekend. Graham was the first to reach the threshold, and Beckett “smashed” through it this week. There are no signs that any will step aside to unite around a single Left candidate but bragging rights over who has most nominations will be valuable.

Why does any of this matter beyond internal union affairs? Well, Unite has been Labour’s biggest donor in recent years and still retains a significant presence on the party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC). Some even think the stakes are so high that this Unite election may have more long-term impact on the party than the May local elections, or even the forthcoming Batley and Spen by-election.

Beckett, who has been suspended from Labour over a tweet about Priti Patel, is almost certain to be reinstated after a reprimand, insiders believe. His supporters think he has the momentum in the race. And if Beckett succeeds McCluskey “he’ll make Len look like a pussycat”, one union source told me. He has already threatened to pull funding for Labour, tweeting his warning just minutes after the party’s Unite staff branch voted to nominate Coyne. Turner, a collegiate trade unionist by nature, has said he would happily work with Starmer.

Beckett’s Twitter controversy may well have helped him raise his profile in the Unite election. Similarly, Newsnight’s allegations of his role in moves to unseat Labour MPs may even boost his credentials among some left-minded union members. However, Coyne’s camp believe he’s the only candidate committed to introducing transparency in how Unite spends their money, be that on the £98m hotel complex in Birmingham or on paying more than £2m in libel costs to ex-MP Anna Turley.

Coyne may also be boosted by the little-noticed fact that in the Labour leadership election, Starmer won a majority of Unite members’ votes. As Steve Turner, who backed Rebecca Long-Bailey, put it to me recently: “We didn’t win the argument inside our own union…We won it amongst the politicos and that group that loves to talk to themselves…But in the real world out there, where 99.9% of our members reside, they’re not.”

And that’s really perhaps why the Unite contest matters. Many of its members, who like both Brexit and state spending, actually voted for Boris Johnson in 2019. If the new general secretary can somehow help Starmer reconnect with those voters, while somehow helping Labour to look more united (the clue is in the union’s name), many of his MPs would be grateful. For the party’s Left, unifying around a single candidate may be just as valuable a lesson too.

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Why The Catch-Up Czar’s Resignation Is Boris Johnson’s Problem

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This was meant to be a quiet week. Commons in recess, a ‘holding pattern’ on Covid, Whitehall treading water while it waits for the latest data on the pandemic. Aside from an update on foreign travel from Grant Shapps on Thursday, the big ‘event’ marked on the No.10 grid was today’s catch-up cash for schools. 

An emergency £1.4bn, on top of an extra £1.7bn already announced for pupils, could have been spun as a statement of intent, an interim measure pending a bigger funding settlement in the chancellor’s spending review later this year. But thanks to some great work by the Times, which exclusively revealed earlier this week just how much cash had been requested, the PR plan was smashed to bits.

Sir Kevan Collins, the catch-up czar, had wanted £15bn but instead got less than a tenth of that, at least in the short term. And his resignation words tonight blasted both barrels not just at the hapless Gavin Williamson (whose departure from Education in a reshuffle seems all but guaranteed), but also at Boris Johnson himself.

By referring explicitly to the failure to provide help to pupils in deprived areas in the north, Collins appeared to expose the PM’s “levelling up” agenda as a hollow trick played on all those who voted Tory in May. “In parts of the country where schools were closed for longer, such as the north, the impact of low skills on productivity is likely to be particularly severe,” he said.

It’s worth remembering that Collins was never going to be a government pushover. He is widely respected for his work in education, and as recently as March he told the education select committee that the £1.7bn first pledged was “not sufficient”. He wanted a comprehensive recovery plan, not a sticking plaster, so it’s perhaps no surprise he’s ripped it off to lay bare the wounds underneath.

This isn’t just about the education gap. For Johnson, this underlines once more the yawning gap between his rhetoric and actual delivery. Back in June 2020, he promised “a massive summer catch-up operation”, but nothing of the kind materialised. Yes, the fresh lockdowns knocked things even more off course, yet parents, pupils and teachers won’t easily forget the promises made.

This March, I remember vividly Johnson telling a No.10 news conference how much catch-up mattered. “The legacy issue I think for me is education,” he said. “It’s the loss of learning for so many children and young people that’s the thing we’ve got to focus on now as a society. And I think it is an opportunity to make amends.” If the PM can’t deliver on his own professed personal priority coming out of the pandemic, what chance do all the other policy areas have?

Critics will point out too that unlike other areas of government (social care, anyone?), there is at least a plan worked up by Collins to “make amends”. His bigger package was about extra teaching time, not just tutoring. Still, there are some in government who tonight are pointing out the idea of an extra half hour on the school day did not go down well with teachers.

The longer day was “not thought through” and not “evidence based”, both of which are red flags to the Treasury. Moreover, doling out £15bn – half the annual primary and pre-primary school budget – between spending reviews was seen as imprudence fiscal management. Allies of the chancellor insist this isn’t about being stingy. “If we just start signing off massive cheques outside of a formal process, there lies mismanagement of taxpayers’ money!” one says.

Yet ultimately the PM is, as he joked in recent months, the First Lord of the Treasury. If he’d really wanted a big, bold plan for education catch-up with big, bold spending to match, he could have got it. The political problem is that an independent expert in schooling has now delivered a damning verdict on Johnson’s central “levelling up” policy, or rather the lack of one

Collins has also made early years education his priority, stressing its social as well as academic benefit, and its underfunding in recent years. The Tories’ closure of SureStarts is perhaps one of their biggest policy errors in the past decade of austerity. Amazingly, Labour has failed to ram home that very point, and has shown a woeful lack of focus on childcare and early years (evidenced by Jeremy Corbyn’s priority of student tuition fees, but under Starmer there’s been no real grabbing of the agenda either).

A cynic might say that the expected grade inflation in this year’s GCSE and A-level exam results will smooth over the problem. But if metrics emerge that younger children of all backgrounds are falling behind expected benchmarks, the lack of a proper “catch-up” or “recovery” plan will be received bitterly by parents who struggled with the home-schooling imposed on them this past year.

It’s possible Johnson will again wriggle out of this latest tight spot. But remember that two of the biggest U-turns forced on him over the past year both involved education: the A-levels fiasco and free school meals. And both were issues of competence.

Collins’ resignation may have gifted Starmer his most powerful weapon yet, offering at the next election a simple way to sum up broken Tory promises and incompetence. Whether Labour can capitalise is another matter.

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Boris Johnson’s In A Holding Pattern On Covid, But Is Keir Starmer Too?

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Just six days ago, Matt Hancock’s name was mud, his reputation ground into the dirt by Dominic Cummings’ onslaught. Today, the health secretary returned to his bouncy ways as he seized on the news that the UK reported not a single death from Covid for the first time since last July. “The vaccines are clearly working,” he said.

Yet while it may look to some as if Hancock has gone from zero to hero in less than a week, he himself added a note of caution about “cases continuing to rise”. Although in Bolton there is early evidence of levelling off of cases of the ‘Indian’ variant, nearby Blackburn, Rossendale, Ribble Valley and Hyndburn are all seeing spikes.

Although case numbers are low overall, it’s no wonder many in government are concerned. Week on week, cases have gone up more than 31% and, crucially, hospitalisations by more than 23%. That’s two of the lights on the government’s dashboard flashing red, just as the zero deaths figure is flashing a healthy green (down 10% on the week). Given the lags we are all by now familiar with, those deaths may not stay zero in coming weeks.

Despite the concern, Boris Johnson is not worried enough to give anyone an update on whether his planned June 21 unlocking will go ahead as planned. In our Lobby briefing today, we learned he didn’t even brief his spokesman beforehand. All the spokesman would do was point us towards the PM’s cake-and-eat-it words on the pandemic last Thursday (the “current” data didn’t suggest any need for delay “but we may need to wait”).

The problem with relying on the PM’s words from five days ago is that, well, a week is a very long time in Covid politics. Johnson got married on Saturday and spent Sunday and Monday on a “mini-moon” – a phrase that sounds like a brief display of his buttocks, but is a very short honeymoon, apparently (though perhaps it means both). It all feels a bit like the early pandemic, when his marital concerns (a divorce then, a wedding now) mean Covid is on the backburner.

And in many ways, it feels as if the government machine is not very interested in saying much about Covid for the rest of this week. Grant Shapps has his travel update on Thursday but few expect much change. Michael Gove’s reviews of covid certification and social distancing look either dead on arrival or delayed to June 14. Jonathan Van-Tam said two weeks ago we would have a “ranging shot” of the transmissibility of the Indian variant by last week. It looks like that estimate may not materialise this week either.

With the Commons in recess, there seems to be a generalised holding pattern going on, in political and policy terms. The public seemed to have more of a sense of urgency about Covid than the PM this weekend, with thousands of young people queuing for their jab outside Twickenham stadium when they could have just packed the pubs.

But the virus doesn’t take a parliamentary recess or a bank holiday break. The rise in case numbers is concerning the most even-handed of scientists. The Bank of England hoped for a V-shaped economic recovery this year, but some current graph projections look worryingly V-shaped on Covid cases. Scotland and England are on the same trajectory, though Wales (which has 10% more people given first doses) is not.

The uncertainty is perhaps why Nicola Sturgeon essentially paused her own roadmap today. While the public have not been told any updates on the Indian/delta variant’s transmissibility, maybe Sturgeon has? I understand Keir Starmer is currently holding off calling for any delay to the June 21 unlocking date, until after he gets a private briefing from Sage.

Starmer’s main problem is that no matter what he says, or how correctly he calls it, the public may not be listening. “Keir’s first 16 months have been the politics of the pandemic, and his next eight months may be the politics of the pandemic. It’s very, very difficult,” one insider says. More than anything Labour says or does, Starmer’s team are acutely aware that the Batley and Spen by-election next month could reflect vaccine jab numbers, whether voters can order a drink at the bar and where they can go on holiday.

In the meantime, what Starmer can hope to do is show the public what kind of man he is, as well as what kind of politician. His latest Piers Morgan’s Life Stories interview on ITV tonight shows him choking back tears as he talks about his disabled mum, his strained relationship with his dad, and the death of his wife’s mother. The New Statesman had some fascinating polling last week that 37% of voters say they just don’t know enough about him to make a judgement yet. His team see that as a huge opportunity, not a weakness, and believe interviews like this could shift that dial.

Picking a popular ITV programme was a smart move for Starmer because he needs to reassure a key demographic that he’s a walking, talking human being. Moreover, Labour’s lingering problems with working class voters were highlighted not just in Hartlepool but in London on May 6. While Sadiq Khan made gains with some upper middle class voters, this fascinating breakdown by Lewis Baston points to swings towards the Tories in key council estate areas in deprived parts of the city.

Like many working class kids who went on to do things their parents never dreamed of, he’s clearly uncomfortable with any idea he would exploit his private life for public consumption. Yet in many ways, Starmer embodies the aspiration story (dad a factory worker, son highest prosecutor in the land) that Labour needs to reconnect with voters it has lost.

While the Covid narrative dominates all our lives, Starmer has to keep reminding us he’ll be ready for the moment the conversation moves on to something else. With politics more volatile than ever, it’s even possible he too could move from zero to hero if he can use this May’s election defeats to show a sense of urgency for change.

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Piers Morgan To Grill Keir Starmer In Special Episode Of Life Stories

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Piers Morgan has announced he’s set to interview Labour leader Keir Starmer as part of a special episode of his ITV talk show Life Stories.

The hour-long interview is set to be filmed next month, and will cover the leader of the opposition’s childhood and career in law, as well as the past year of leading the Labour party in lockdown.

Following the announcement, Piers said: “It’s very unusual for party political leaders to submit themselves to such lengthy personal interviews and I am delighted that Sir Keir has agreed to talk to me about his fascinating life.

“It promises to be a memorable and very revealing Life Stories show.”

ITV’s head of entertainment, Katie Rawcliffe said the forthcoming interview “promises to be a real treat for our ITV audience.”

There’s no official airdate for Starmer’s episode of Life Stories yet, but ITV has said it will air “in the coming months”

Starmer’s interview will be the first with a party leader on Piers’ show since the broadcaster interviewed Gordon Brown when he was prime minister in 2010.

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Keir Starmer

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Why Union Boss Elections Are As Crucial As ‘Red Wall’ Votes For Keir Starmer

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Howard Beckett, assistant general secretary of Unite, is among those vying to replace Len McCluskey

This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Follow HuffPost UK on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Bob Crow, the late boss of the RMT transport union, was undoubtedly a controversial figure. 

London commuters late for work due to seemingly endless Tube strikes would curse his name. Politicians and journalists who clashed with the left-wing firebrand would call him a “dinosaur” or, owing to his whopping £142,000 salary, a “champagne socialist”. 

But when Crow died suddenly in 2014, it was notable how tributes came from not just those sympathetic to left-wing politics but from across the political spectrum. 

Even Boris Johnson, then the Tory mayor of London, recognised Crow “fought tirelessly” for better pay and conditions and that he thought his former foe “a man of character”.

Obviously, no self-respecting union leader would want to be seen getting too cosy with Conservative politicians. 

But how Crow was regarded in the political sphere stands in sharp contrast to Howard Beckett, one of the candidates to replace Len McCluskey as general secretary of Unite. 

Keir Starmer moved to suspend him from the Labour Party for saying home secretary Priti Patel, a British-born minister of Indian heritage, “should be deported”. 

Beckett apologised to Patel but remained defiant during an interview with Sky News on Friday, refusing to withdraw from the Unite race and saying his suspension was “completely inappropriate”. 

He added he did not “literally” mean the minister should be deported and was “sorry if” that was not clear to those that read his hastily-deleted tweet. 

While the assistant general secretary claimed he had not been informed of a suspension, Labour sources insist an email was sent and his union informed. 

Unite, meanwhile, does not appear to have taken any action, telling HuffPost UK he “has correctly and unreservedly apologised”, while offering no further comment. 

Beckett’s is the just the latest in a long line of bad headlines and divisive interventions from union chiefs in the seven years since Crow’s death. 

And many of them have targeted not the Conservatives, but Labour. 

McCluskey accused former deputy leader Tom Watson “sharpening his knife looking for a back to stab” and said Starmer faces the “dustbin of history” if he does not change direction. 

The FBU’s Matt Wrack has hit out at Starmer for “watering down” policies and Labour MPs for undermining former leader Jeremy Corbyn.

TSSA boss Manuel Cortes repeatedly went public to hit out at Corbyn for Labour’s “Brexit fudge” when the party was in turmoil over its policy on a second referendum in 2018.  

Former GMB general secretary Tim Roache stood down last year citing ill health and has faced claims of impropriety, which he denies. Separately, an independent report found the union to be institutionally sexist. 

In the minds of voters, all this friendly fire points to more left-wing division and Labour leaders not in control of their party’s agenda. 

Fresh elections this year for the leadership of Unite and GMB follow Christina McAnea’s election as the first female general secretary of Unison in January. 

With Peter Mandelson calling for union reform, these races are just as  important for Starmer’s Labour Party, if not more, than any parliamentary by-election. 

A new era of Labour blood-letting and a “war of the roses” between MPs and the union movement splashed across every newspaper is not likely to boost the electoral hopes of Corbyn’s successor.

Though said to be “McCluskey’s right hand man”, Beckett is unlikely to emerge victorious in the Unite race, however. Some believe he may struggle to even make the ballot.

The contest is between Steve Turner, a figure who prefers to keep his powder dry until behind closed doors, and moderate Gerard Coyne, who pointedly told HuffPost UK that Unite can no longer be Starmer’s “backseat driver”.  

Whoever leads a union affiliated to Labour will have a voice and a platform. But, as Crow proved, how they use that influence will be their legacy. 

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‘Time For Blair’ Is Trending And Everyone Knew What To Do

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With the Labour Party in turmoil following the loss of the Hartlepool by-election and the subsequent botched shadow cabinet reshuffle, questions are being asked about the leadership of Keir Starmer.

Does the former Director of Public Prosecutions have the charisma to match Boris Johnson? Could anyone realistically do better against a government spending lots of money and successfully vaccinating its population against a deadly pandemic?

As many wrestle these questions and more, one man has an answer: Time for Blair. 

That’s the simple solution proposed by Andrew Adonis, the former Labour Cabinet minister in the 2000s who now sits in the House of Lords.

The proposition on its surface is pretty simple: bring back the man who steered Labour to a hat-trick of general elections, a man with a proven track record of success. 

And he boiled it down to just three words. And used it again.

The polls, however, don’t quite see it that way, with Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn regarded as better placed than TB.

But the argument seemed lost on most who engaged with the idea on Twitter, and there seemed to be three directions to take it.

The most popular was to reference Blair’s foreign policy, and implicit in all of them was the war in Iraq. 

A second was to apply the maxim to the more trivial moments in life. 

Or deliberately get confused about which famous Blair is being referenced.

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Starmer Warned Ducking Brexit ‘Not Viable Strategy’ As Pro-EU Campaign Launched

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Labour Party leader Keir Starmer 

Keir Starmer has been warned Labour cannot duck challenging Boris Johnson over Brexit as pro-EU campaigners launched a new platform to monitor damage to the economy. 

Brexit Spotlight will track how withdrawal from the EU hits the UK, from the loss of workers’ rights and free movement, to science funding, jobs and new regulations. 

The initiative by Another Europe Is Possible is aimed at pressuring politicians on the left into backing closer ties with Europe in future. 

After Leave voters in seats across the midlands and north backed Boris Johnson at the 2019 general election, Labour MPs voted for the Conservatives’ trade deal with Brussels in December. 

Starmer has since said rejoining the EU was “not realistic” and there was no scope for “major renegotiation” of the government’s deal. 

But pro-EU Labour members, most of whom backed Starmer in the Labour leadership election, are thought to be increasingly frustrated at the party’s approach and want to see Johnson’s deal scrutinised. 

The new site will monitor Brexit’s impact “in real time” and also focus on the environment, exports and human rights, as well as feature exclusive investigations and research. 

Laura Parker, a member of Another Europe is Possible’s national committee and a former national coordinator of Momentum, told HuffPost UK: “The fallout from Brexit is going to dominate our politics for decades to come, and if last week’s elections demonstrated anything, it was that refusing to talk about the issue is not a viable strategy – for Labour or for anyone else.

“Places like Hartlepool voted Tory because they have been neglected for decades and then sold a lie about immigration being to blame rather than this deliberate, chronic under-investment.

“English nationalism is the force which Boris Johnson will use to mobilise his new voter base; Labour and the wider progressive left must learn to put forward a positive alternative.”

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Another Europe is Possible organiser Michael Chessum addressing protesters in central London

The Office for Budget Responsibility said in March that Brexit was likely to shrink the UK economy by 4% over the next 15 years. 

Labour MP Nadia Whittome said the party should respond to Johnson’s “levelling up” agenda by referencing Brexit’s impact.

She said: “The real effects of leaving the EU have only just begun to be felt. The government wants to use Brexit to create a race to the bottom on rights and living standards, destroying decades of progress to benefit the super-rich and giant corporations. 

“Attacks on workers’ rights and environmental standards will hurt all of us, regardless of whether we voted Leave or Remain, as will job losses and toxic trade deals which bring down our food standards.” 

There were signs Labour was willing to task the government to task on Brexit, however, with new shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves telling ministers on Thursday voters “haven’t heard a word still about this government’s vision of how we will become global leaders in manufacturing and industry outside of the European Union”. 

She said: “They are lacking in ambition, and they are in denial about what businesses need to thrive in a new environment.”

Michael Chessum, Another Europe is Possible’s national organiser, said: “Brexit is already an unfolding disaster – and not just for the people who opposed it. Farmers, fishers and exporters are already facing ruin, and as the process continues so will many of the people who voted Leave. 

“This project is about exposing that reality in real time, so that the effects of Brexit are not just a series of disconnected shocks, and building a case for a much closer relationship with Europe in the future with regulatory alignment and free movement at its heart.”

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