As Britain edges closer\u00a0toward\u00a0its general election on July 4, the polls tell the same story they have for\u00a0most\u00a0of the past three years:\u00a0This is a country screaming out for change. <\/p>\n
The situation has been dire for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak since he took office\u00a0in late\u00a02022.\u00a0His governing Conservative Party \u2013 whose 14 years in power have been defined by the political gambles of austerity, Brexit and radical economics \u2013\u00a0fell behind the opposition Labour Party in the polls around November 2021, and the gap has only widened since. <\/p>\n
Barring a major shock, Labour leader Keir Starmer will be the person walking through the famous black door of 10 Downing Street\u00a0in less than three weeks\u2019 time. <\/p>\n
Starmer has promised to be the agent of change that Britain needs. He has pledged to grow the\u00a0country\u2019s\u00a0economy by reforming planning laws and investing in a new industrial strategy. He\u00a0has said he\u00a0will set up a national wealth fund with \u00a37.3 billion\u00a0($9.3bn)\u00a0of public money that will help pay for the transition to net zero\u00a0emissions. <\/p>\n
An\u00a0\u00a38.3bn publicly-owned energy company, Great British Energy, will see the\u00a0United Kingdom\u2019s energy grid\u00a0decarbonized\u00a0by 2030. Starmer says all this can be achieved without raising income taxes, though there are no commitments\u00a0on other levies, such as capital gains tax, which is paid on money made from selling assets, including property and shares. <\/p>\n
The rest of the\u00a0Labour\u00a0manifesto combines a mix of modest centrism mixed with soft socialism.\u00a0It includes imposing\u00a0taxes on private schools to\u00a0help\u00a0pay for state education and windfall\u00a0levies\u00a0on energy companies to fund the transition to clean energy. There are\u00a0also\u00a0commitments on workers\u2019 rights, cutting waiting lists for health care\u00a0and\u00a0also controlling immigration. <\/p>\n
Critics on the right say that Starmer will need to raise taxes to fund his plans, while\u00a0skeptics\u00a0on the left say his manifesto is not bold or ambitious enough to change Britain for the better. <\/p>\n
This is a Britain, of course, that has had\u00a0record-high\u00a0inflation over the past two years, watched interest rates\u00a0skyrocket, seen the pound sink to a record low\u00a0against the dollar,\u00a0is still in a\u00a0cost-of-living\u00a0crisis, has had the longest waiting times for\u00a0medical\u00a0operations in recent history and has spent the past eight years in political turmoil following the\u00a02016\u00a0vote to leave the European Union. <\/p>\n
In short,\u00a0this is\u00a0a long list of things to sort out in a five-year term when public finances are in disarray. The question for Starmer, should he win, is whether the mess is too big for him to fix and whether he has the political skill to bring about the change he has promised. <\/p>\n
On paper,\u00a0the 61-year-old\u00a0Starmer looks like a classic establishment figure. <\/p>\n
Once a leading human rights lawyer, he became Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in 2008, running the Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales \u2013\u00a0a high-profile job for which he was knighted, making him the first ever Labour leader to enter the job with the prefix Sir to their name. <\/p>\n
Starmer, however, is \u2013 by the standards of modern political leaders \u2013 from relatively humble beginnings. <\/p>\n
Born in 1962, Starmer grew up in a small town to the south of London. His father was a toolmaker who worked in a factory, his mother was a nurse who suffered with severe physical disabilities, which ultimately led to one of her legs being amputated. <\/p>\n
While Starmer has never claimed to have suffered poverty, he has talked of financial struggles that affected his family, as well as the learning difficulties that held back his younger brother. <\/p>\n
Clearly, these early experiences shaped Starmer\u2019s politics. He has talked about noticing people looking down on his father for working in a factory or bullying his brother. His parents were political, naming their\u00a0eldest after the first Labour leader in parliament, Keir Hardie. <\/p>\n
Starmer chose to study law at the University of Leeds, before completing a postgraduate\u00a0degree\u00a0at the University of Oxford. He initially thought he would have a legal career working for trade unions, but as his politics evolved in line with his studies, he became increasingly interested in human rights. <\/p>\n
Starmer has been on something of a journey since entering politics. He was elected to Parliament in 2015 at the age of 52 and\u00a0entered\u00a0the shadow cabinet\u00a0a\u00a0little over a year later. <\/p>\n
Jeremy Corbyn,\u00a0then the Labour leader, made Starmer his Brexit chief following the 2016 referendum. <\/p>\n
Corbyn is a controversial figure in British politics and serving in his top team is still something that haunts Starmer. Corbyn had historically been\u00a0on\u00a0the far left of the Labour Party. Prior to becoming leader in 2015, Corbyn had at various points in his long career supported nuclear disarmament,\u00a0and\u00a0withdrawal from NATO, and said it was a \u201ctragedy\u201d that Osama bin Laden was killed rather than put on trial. <\/p>\n
Starmer was in Corbyn\u2019s shadow cabinet\u00a0for\u00a0the 2017 and 2019 general elections \u2013 something the Conservatives bring up regularly as evidence that he is a threat to national security, having tried twice to make Corbyn prime minister. <\/p>\n
However, Starmer has since kicked Corbyn out of\u00a0the\u00a0Labour Party following an investigation into\u00a0antisemitism\u00a0during Corbyn\u2019s time as leader. Starmer\u00a0has also said\u00a0that he supported Corbyn knowing he would lose. Pressed on that point in a BBC \u201cQuestion Time\u201d program, he said Corbyn \u201cwould be a better prime minister\u201d than \u201cwhat we got\u201d in Boris Johnson. Starmer also argues\u00a0that he\u00a0has brought Labour back to a position of electability. <\/p>\n
The polls suggest that is true, but critics of Starmer on the left say that he used Corbyn and\u00a0his wing\u00a0of the Labour Party to win the party leadership in 2020 \u2013 committing to\u00a0several\u00a0left-wing positions\u00a0such as\u00a0nationalizing public services, scrapping university tuition fees and reversing\u00a0Conservative welfare reforms \u2013 only to abandon those pledges\u00a0once he got closer to\u00a0power. <\/p>\n
Starmer has at various times responded to accusations that he has drifted politically by saying that he puts his country before his political party, and that it\u2019s only possible to change things if you are in power. <\/p>\n
Whether you think Starmer\u2019s\u00a0current\u00a0plan is unambitious, dishonest, or exactly what Britain needs, it\u2019s impossible to push through policy without political and personal capital. <\/p>\n
Dominic Grieve, a Conservative politician who served as\u00a0attorney\u00a0general while Starmer was DPP, speaks glowingly of this period. <\/p>\n
Grieve\u00a0added\u00a0that Starmer was able to be an effective manager because \u201che is not bogged down with years of political ideology or baggage. He can see what is wrong and can address it.\u201d <\/p>\n
Much as Starmer\u2019s allies might see this as a strength, his opponents, from both sides of politics,\u00a0see it as a weakness. <\/p>\n
To those on the right, Starmer is a man who will say anything to get in power. He is someone who\u00a0in their eyes\u00a0will support\u00a0Corbyn,\u00a0who is anti-NATO and has repeatedly been accused of being a terrorist\u00a0sympathizer,\u00a0to get what he wants and is a danger to Britain. <\/p>\n
To the left, he is someone who doesn\u2019t have the conviction\u00a0to make radical changes\u00a0and, once in office,\u00a0will not be materially that different to a Conservative leader. <\/p>\n
If current polling is accurate, Starmer will\u00a0win\u00a0a historic and enormous majority in the\u00a0House of Commons. But\u00a0the future may not be so simple.\u00a0Given\u00a0the current state of Britain\u2019s finances, the circumstances of\u00a0Labour\u2019s probable\u00a0victory and, even Starmer\u2019s own personality traits, it\u00a0might mean he doesn\u2019t have quite the blank check\u00a0that a leader with virtually no opposition\u00a0in parliament\u00a0would typically enjoy. <\/p>\n
An\u00a0inability to turn that parliamentary power into tangible results\u00a0at a time when voters are crying out for something different\u00a0could mean that five years from now, his moderate, safety-first center-left program may ultimately be\u00a0seen as\u00a0just as big a political gamble as any of those the Conservatives took in the\u00a0past 14 years. <\/p>\n\n
As Britain edges closer\u00a0toward\u00a0its general election on July 4, the polls tell the same story they have for\u00a0most\u00a0of the past three years:\u00a0This is a country screaming out for change. The situation has been dire for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak since he took office\u00a0in late\u00a02022.\u00a0His governing Conservative Party \u2013 whose 14 years in power have been <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":20102,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}