Labor leader Keir Starmer visits the Vale Inn in Macclesfield, United Kingdom on June 27, 2024. Cameron Smith/Getty Images via AFP
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narrative After fourteen years in opposition, Labor is expected to win the July 4 general election. The declared victory was less about the appeal of his program than about the erosion of conservative power.
“I am a prime ministerial candidate, not a circus director. » Gray hair, gray suit, gray tie, Keir Starmer looked no stranger when he delivered his 136-page election manifesto in mid-June at the massive Co-op Live Hall in Manchester, a former lung business in northwest England. To tell the truth, the aim was not to impress the gallery, but to appear as serious as possible, and above all to avoid misdeeds. In the general election on 4th July, Labor won a clear victory over the Conservatives by twenty points. He has been leading the polls for more than eighteen months. Barring any major surprises, its chairman Keir Starmer, a 61-year-old former barrister, is due to move into 10 Downing Street soon.
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Like the French, the English are called to the polls. And, like this side of the channel, it's not really planned. Panic, lack of preparation, angry elected officials, rushed campaigning, trouble starting school holidays… The current prime minister, conservative Rishi Sunak, will hold elections until January 2025. Without anyone understanding why, he decided to hurry up the schedule. The similarities end there. In the United Kingdom, the far right was spawned by Nigel Farage's populist pro-Brexit and anti-immigration Reform UK Party. He will steal some seats from the Tories (conservative party) and make the historic defeat even worse, but according to opinion polls, he has no chance of winning first place.
Labor has been little by little in opposition for fourteen years. And in fourteen years, they had plenty of time to rebuild their health. But they understood that the declared victory was less due to a wave of support for their plan than a feed from conservatives. The Tories' record is disastrous. They leave a country devastated by Brexit (a majority of Britons now believe it was a mistake to leave Europe), weighed down by a decade of zero growth, increasing poverty and reducing life expectancy among the most disadvantaged.
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After all, their image as a nearly two-century-old party with experience in business management has won big. The Brexit vote in 2016 was considered a poker move by Prime Minister David Cameron, the constant escapes and scandals of Boris Johnson (we especially remember the illegal parties organized in Downing Street during his imprisonment), the apparent arrival of Liz Truss, an admirer of Margaret Thatcher. What succeeded in panicking the markets in just 49 short days was the lack of political sense and mistakes that Rishi Sunak, one of the country's richest men, deemed out of place…” The British felt that the Conservatives could no longer run the countryLombard Odier's Chief Economist Sammy Sar analyzes. Labor now appears to be the party of good managers. »
A clean slate from the Jeremy Corby years
As soon as he became Labor leader in April 2020, Keir Starmer immediately drew attention. His predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, was viewed by moderates as a divisive, radical, sectarian figure who did not address anti-Semitism within his forces and made ambiguous comments on Hamas and Hezbollah. “He's the British Jean-Luc Mélenchon.”, a reference to the French LFI leader, Denis McShane, former minister for European affairs under Tony Blair. The Labor left accuses Starmer of leading a purge. Jeremy Corbyn, who has been expelled from the party, has decided to run against Labour's candidate in his stronghold of Islington North in north London.
A Starmer version of the Labor Party has also led to a much greater appearance “Business friendly” is possible. Budgetary austerity has become the mantra of the British left. In the opposition shadow cabinet, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is occupied by Rachel Reeves, a 44-year-old former Bank of England economist who spends her days meeting leaders and could be a future finance minister if Labor wins. election. ” Keir Starmer carried out economic reforms in the 1990s similar to Tony Blair's New Labour, which won three consecutive elections. », notes Florence Faucher, director of the Center for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE) at Sciences Po.
The essential task of the Labor leader during this campaign was to be as cautious as possible. “He is not very charismatic, but structured and organized, a politician who supports common and unifying duties”, analyzes Christophe Gillissen, a professor at the University of Caen-Normandy. Hailing from a modest family from Essex in the east of England – father a laborer, mother a nurse – only one of four children to complete higher education – law at Leeds and Oxford – Labor leader named Keir. In honor of James Keir Hardy, he was the first Labor member elected to the House of Commons in 1900, but he was almost a novice in politics. She was first elected to the House of Commons in 2015, aged 53, after working as a human rights lawyer and barrister.
In Manchester, in the huge co-op live room, Keir Starmer presented his plan with the austerity of a notary. Nothing revolutionary after all. This is not a question of turning back to liberalism “Made in the United Kingdom”, But the stigmatization of a population that has suffered from years of austerity policies should be lessened a bit. The Labor leader wants to invest in future industries, green energies and infrastructure. He wants to ban tens of thousands of medical appointments for the NHS (National Health Service). He will also abandon Rishi Sunak's plan to outsource asylum applications to Rwanda and wants to return to better relations with the EU. “This is a serious plan for the future of our country. He finished, and every policy (…) is carefully thought out and we are confident that it can be implemented. »
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