tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/keir-starmer-78580/articlesKeir Starmer – The Conversation2024-03-08T16:20:11Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2251182024-03-08T16:20:11Z2024-03-08T16:20:11ZLabour’s Muslim vote: what the data so far says about the election risk of Keir Starmer’s Gaza position<p>According to the 2021 census, 6.5% of the population in England and Wales <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/religion/bulletins/religionenglandandwales/census2021">identify as Muslim</a>. In <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/constituency-data-religion/">Rochdale</a>, which has just elected George Galloway to be its MP, the proportion of the population identifying as Muslim is far higher – at 30.5%.</p>
<p>As is often the case in byelections, the turnout for the contest that elected Galloway was low. But Galloway received 12,335 votes in a constituency which contains 34,871 Muslims. His campaign focused almost entirely on the war in Gaza rather than local issues, and although we don’t know what proportion of his vote was Muslim, it is a fair assumption that a large percentage of it was.</p>
<p>The question in the wake of Galloway’s election (and one that the new MP is certainly encouraging) is whether this byelection has any implications for Labour in the general election taking place this year?</p>
<p>Keir Starmer has <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68446423">argued</a> that Galloway won because the Labour candidate was sacked after repeating a conspiracy theory that Israel was behind the Hamas attack on October 7 last year. Galloway, by contrast, argues that his victory is a sign that voters are about to turn away from Labour in their droves because they are angry about its failure to call for a ceasefire in Gaza.</p>
<p>Which of them is right? </p>
<h2>The Muslim vote</h2>
<p>There are 20 constituencies in the UK that have an electorate comprised of more than 30% Muslims. All of them elected a Labour MP in 2019. At the top of the list is Birmingham Hodge Hill, where 62% of the population identifies as Muslim. </p>
<p>In Bradford West 59% of the population is Muslim, in Ilford South, 44%, and in Leicester South, 32%. Rochdale ranks 18th in the list of the 20 constituencies with the largest proportion of Muslim residents. Interestingly enough, just under 19% of the electorate in Holborn and St Pancras, Keir Starmer’s constituency, identifies as Muslim.</p>
<p>There are currently 199 Labour MPs in the House of Commons – a slight reduction from the 202 who were elected in 2019. A bare majority in the House of Commons requires 326 MPs and a working majority more like 346. The party clearly has a mountain to climb to achieve that, even with a lead of around <a href="https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/#national-parliament-voting-intention">20% in current polls</a>.</p>
<p>So Starmer will certainly be asking whether Labour can still expect to win seats with a high proportion of Muslim voters in a way that it has done in the past, given what happened in Rochdale. He continues to equivocate over the deaths in Gaza and still follows the government’s line on the conflict, despite it being essentially a colonial war. </p>
<p>Historically, Labour has had a long tradition of anti-colonialism. After the second world war, it was a Labour government that began the process of de-colonisation in the British empire by giving independence to India in 1947.</p>
<h2>When is a safe seat not a safe seat?</h2>
<p>There is an argument that constituencies with a high proportion of Muslims are relatively safe Labour seats. This is evidenced by the fact that they remained in the Labour camp even when the party suffered a heavy defeat in 2019. The implication is that if anger over Gaza is confined to Muslims, then it is not going to affect the number of seats won by Labour very much.</p>
<p>However, concern about Gaza is shared by people other than Muslims. Polling from YouGov conducted last month shows that there has been a distinct shift in British public opinion about the war since it started. More people are calling for a ceasefire and fewer see Israel’s attacks on Gaza as being <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48675-british-attitudes-to-the-israel-gaza-conflict-february-2024-update">justified</a>.</p>
<p>There is clear evidence that younger voters, in particular, feel <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2024/02/12/4b134/1">more sympathy</a> towards the Palestinian cause than the rest of the population. This is also a group that heavily supported Labour in the 2019 election. While young people in this group are unlikely to switch to voting Conservative over Gaza, the concern for Labour will be that they might <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/search?q=Brexit+Britain">abstain</a> in the next election.</p>
<h2>How different religions vote</h2>
<p>Starmer’s reluctance to call out what is happening in Gaza is a puzzle, since Muslims are overwhelmingly Labour supporters. This can be seen in data from the <a href="https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/">British Election Study</a> online panel survey conducted after the 2019 general election. The chart shows the relationship between the religious affiliation of the respondents and their voting behaviour in that election.</p>
<p><strong>Religious Affiliation and Voting in the 2019 General Election:</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chart showing that support for Labour is far higher among Muslims than other religions." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/580681/original/file-20240308-26-9vs223.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=587&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">How religious identity maps onto party preference.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">British Election Study</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Church of England used to be described as the “Tory party at prayer” and it clearly remains so today, since 64% of Church of England identifiers supported the Conservatives compared to just 25% who supported Labour. </p>
<p>In contrast, Roman Catholics were marginally more Labour (42%) than Conservative (41%). Nonconformists were similar to Church of England identifiers with 48% Conservative and 25% Labour. Meanwhile, 43% of atheists and agnostics supported Labour and 34% the Conservatives.</p>
<p>Jewish voters favoured the Conservatives by a margin of 56% to 30% Labour. Finally, Muslim voters favoured Labour by a massive 80% compared with the Conservative’s 13%.</p>
<p>If anger over the Gaza war is confined to Muslims it is not likely to influence the outcome of this year’s election. But it is worth remembering that this is not the first time Labour has been damaged by events in the Middle East. </p>
<p>Support for Tony Blair was greatly weakened by his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 at the request of the then US president, George W. Bush. He has never really lived down the reputation he acquired for this mistake.</p>
<p>There is not yet evidence that Labour’s position on Gaza will cost it a majority in the election but the strength of feeling on this issue is growing and the future is not certain. With hundreds of additional seats needed, Starmer can’t afford to take any for granted. The risk of losing these voters to the Conservatives is marginal but the risk of losing them to apathy and disillusionment should have him reconsidering his position.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/225118/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC</span></em></p>Labour’s Muslim vote is concentrated in safe seats – but with an electoral mountain to climb, no contest can be taken for granted.Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2241342024-02-22T14:31:18Z2024-02-22T14:31:18ZSpeaker Lindsay Hoyle sparks chaos: five steps to understanding why MPs stormed out of parliament during Gaza vote<p>Chaos engulfed the House of Commons on Wednesday, February 21 when MPs representing the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party (SNP) stormed out of the chamber following a furious row over a debate on calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. The situation was complex but can be explained in five key moments.</p>
<p>The main piece of business in the House of Commons on the day in question was an opposition day debate tabled by the Scottish National Party (SNP) calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Opposition day debates are an opportunity for opposition parties to put issues that they care about onto the parliamentary agenda. </p>
<p>There are 20 opposition days allocated per parliamentary year – 17 for the main opposition party (Labour) to set the agenda and three for the second opposition party (the SNP). </p>
<p>The drama unfolded on an SNP day and the chaos was triggered by the wording of the motion put forward for debate by the SNP. This contained the phrase “collective punishment of the Palestinian people” and did not include a call for a two-state solution, which Labour objected to.</p>
<h2>1. The SNP sets a trap</h2>
<p>To some degree the motion was a political trap set by the SNP for Labour. </p>
<p>In a November vote on the situation in Gaza, the Labour party suffered a <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/who-are-the-rebel-labour-mps-that-resigned-over-the-vote-for-a-gaza-ceasefire-13009351">major rebellion</a>, with 56 MPs voting with the SNP and against their own party to show their support for a ceasefire. Several shadow ministers resigned so they could vote this way. </p>
<p>Along with a desire to express support for a ceasefire, the SNP evidently saw an opportunity to split Labour once again with its opposition day motion. </p>
<h2>2. Labour tables its own amendment</h2>
<p>To avoid a split, Labour tabled its own amendment to the SNP’s motion. This called for a “humanitarian ceasefire” and included additional details, such as a call for a two-state solution. However it is unusual for opposition parties to seek to amend the motions of other opposition parties. </p>
<p>On such occasions where an opposition amendment is tabled, it is voted upon first, prior to the original (in this case SNP) motion. The spanner in the works here for Labour was that the government also tabled its own amendment to the SNP motion. </p>
<p>In this situation it comes down to the Speaker to decide which amendment is selected – and typically only one is selected. If the government tables an amendment to an opposition day motion, it will be called. The tabling of such an amendment from the government would have, in normal circumstances, torpedoed Labour’s plan. </p>
<h2>3. The speaker makes an unexpected decision</h2>
<p>However, something unexpected then came to pass. Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker, decided to permit both Labour and the government’s amendment to be called to allow for the widest possible debate. </p>
<p>Although not completely against House of Commons rules (<a href="https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/commons/standing-orders-public11/">standing orders</a>) allowing both amendments to proceed does go against convention. The speaker’s decision was taken against the advice of the clerk of the House of Commons (the most senior adviser to the speaker and the house).</p>
<p>Hoyle appears to have made the decision to select both amendments for a vote having spoken to Labour MPs about the fears for their safety. Many have said that they’ve faced threats of violence for failing to speak out in favour of a ceasefire. </p>
<p>Back in December, the constituency office of <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/mike-freer-minister-to-stand-down-as-mp-over-personal-safety-fears-after-death-threats-and-arson-attack-13061089">Conservative MP Mike Freer </a> was hit by an arson attack (fortunately no one was injured) and he has since announced he is standing down as an MP over personal safety fears. </p>
<p>These MPs had asked for the opportunity to express their support for a ceasefire in the chamber via the Labour amendment to make their position clear to the public. Party leader Keir Starmer, in tabling the Labour amendment, was attempting to give them the opportunity to do so.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1760345776876564728"}"></div></p>
<h2>4. MPs storm out of the chamber</h2>
<p>Despite Hoyle’s decision being made apparently with the best of intentions, it angered many MPs, especially as it broke both convention and the official advice of the clerk of the house. </p>
<p>A shouting match broke out between MPs on both sides of the house and between MPs and the speaker and his deputy. The government withdrew its amendment so it couldn’t be voted on and asked its MPs not to take part in any votes. SNP and Conservative MPs walked out of the House of Commons chamber in anger over what had happened. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1760373879527137679"}"></div></p>
<p>In withdrawing its amendment, the government prevented a sequence of votes from occurring. Had the government not withdrawn its amendment, there would have been three votes.</p>
<p>MPs would have voted first on Labour’s amendment (which would have likely been defeated due to the government’s majority), then on the SNP’s original opposition day motion (which would also have been likely defeated due to the government’s majority) and finally on the government’s amendment. The speaker’s plan was for everyone’s motions and amendments to be put to a vote – it just didn’t work out that way. </p>
<h2>5. Labour’s amendment passes</h2>
<p>Amid the chaos of the government withdrawing, a vote did eventually take place. Labour’s amendment to the SNP motion was taken and passed without objection. That meant that the SNP motion was duly amended and passed too (but not in the original form that the party wanted).</p>
<p>SNP MPs are justifiably angry. It was their opposition day debate (of which they only get three days per parliamentary year) and it has been completely overshadowed by screaming and shouting over parliamentary procedure.</p>
<h2>The result: an important issue overshadowed</h2>
<p>Despite the House of Commons passing a motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, MPs have not covered themselves in glory. The public will certainly be questioning what on earth was going on.</p>
<p>This anger, over what some MPs see as an abuse of procedure, has completely overshadowed the actual topic of the debate, the conflict in Israel and Gaza, as well as the humanitarian disaster. Although opposition day motions are not binding on the government, and this vote would not have led to a ceasefire, it is an issue which matters to MPs – and to the wider public. </p>
<p>Nor should we underestimate how angry MPs are at the speaker’s decision. He has apologised and said he made the wrong decision but many believe that he has overstepped his authority and have accused him of being biased towards Labour by backing both amendments. </p>
<p>At the time of writing, 60 MPs had signed an <a href="https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/61908">early day motion</a> (used by MPs to draw attention to a particular issue) stating that they have no confidence in Hoyle as speaker. They include SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn. Calmer heads may prevail over the coming days but the decision Hoyle made has undermined his position and authority.</p>
<p><em>This article has been corrected. It originally stated the Mike Freer is a Labour MP when he is in fact a Conservative MP.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/224134/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thomas Caygill has previously received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council. </span></em></p>Instead of voting on a ceasefire, the House of Commons descended into furious arguments between MPs and the speaker.Thomas Caygill, Senior Lecturer in Politics, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2236662024-02-16T11:56:33Z2024-02-16T11:56:33ZWellingborough and Kingswood byelections: it’s never been this bad for the Conservatives, and it could still get worse<p>Writing about Conservative byelection calamities has become something of a standard Friday practice for me. But the party’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-68313404">defeat in Wellingborough</a> in Northamptonshire was particularly brutal. </p>
<p>The Tory vote share was a mere 25% and the Conservative to Labour swing of 28.5% was the second biggest in modern electoral history. Only <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Dudley_West_by-election">Dudley West in 1994</a>, with a 29.1% swing, was bigger. That result was the clearest first demonstration that Labour would oust the Conservatives by a huge majority at the 1997 general election. Politics is on repeat. </p>
<p>The loss of Kingswood in South Gloucestershire was on a smaller (16.4%) swing, but is equally ominous for Rishi Sunak. Apart from in 1992, whichever party Kingswood chose over the half-century of its existence (it is about to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-constituency-boundaries-are-being-redrawn-to-make-them-more-equal-but-it-wont-save-the-conservatives-221256">split</a> into other constituencies) also formed the government.</p>
<h2>An unprecedented year of byelections</h2>
<p>The Conservatives have an increasingly unhappy knack of creating unnecessary and unwelcome (for them) contests. Since 2022, the Conservatives have now lost six byelections to Labour, on an average swing of 21%. </p>
<p>Byelections used to be prompted mainly by deaths. During this parliamentary term however, nine contests in Conservative-held seats have been products of resignations, sometimes after behaviour by the resigning MP that could most generously be described as “controversial”. Another was forced by a recall petition and three necessitated by deaths. Eight of the nine byelections following resignations were lost, as was the recall petition contest and one of the three caused by death.</p>
<p>The Kingswood contest was at least precipitated by a resignation on principle. Chris Skidmore <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67895246">resigned</a> as an MP, angered by his government’s issuing of more oil and gas exploration licences.</p>
<p>Wellingborough’s byelection was caused by the <a href="https://theconversation.com/peter-bone-kicked-out-of-parliament-for-violence-and-sexual-misconduct-how-recall-petitions-work-220102">recall petition</a> lodged against Peter Bone under the Recall of MPs Act 2015. Bone, who was found to have bullied and exposed himself to a member of his staff, was suspended from the House of Commons for six weeks, triggering a petition signed by 13% of electors (10% is the threshold needed to hold a byelection). </p>
<p>Electors disillusioned by the Conservatives have had unprecedented opportunities to vent their displeasure. The net effect has been the biggest loss of seats during a parliamentary term since the 1960s. </p>
<h2>Looking towards a general election</h2>
<p>Is there any brighter news for the Conservatives? Amid the wreckage, the party could point to modest turnouts in both byelections, 38% in Wellingborough and 37% in Kingswood. But low byelection turnout is common. And the results are more a consequence of the Conservative vote dropping – Labour is not piling on the votes. </p>
<p>It is a huge leap of faith to assume the stay-at-homes were all Conservative-leaners who will show up at the general election. Conservative optimists could point to their Kingswood vote share being above that obtained in the constituency at general elections during the party’s wilderness years of 1997, 2001 and 2005. But the opposite was true with Thursday’s pitiful performance in Wellingborough.</p>
<p>The lingering Brexit bonus for the Conservatives may be neutered by the entry of Reform UK. Richard’s Tice’s outfit is no Ukip in its heyday or the Brexit Party, both of which offered a clear and popular core aim. </p>
<p>Nonetheless, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/02/16/reform-uk-wellingborough-kingswood-by-election-richard-tice/">Reform winning</a> 13% of the vote in Wellingborough and 10% in Kingswood is an achievement worth noting, if unlikely to be replicated come general election day. The Conservatives won three-quarters of the Brexit Leave vote in 2019. Reform UK will act as a repository for disaffected Brexiteer Tories in particular. </p>
<p>No party has ever won an election when trailing its main rival on the economy. Even without Thursday’s news that the UK fell into a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-68297420">recession</a> in 2023, the Conservatives are well behind Labour on economic stewardship. </p>
<p>It has been 45 years since the less popular leader of the “big two” won the election (Margaret Thatcher trailed James Callaghan in 1979) and Sunak <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48452-sunak-vs-starmer-2024-how-have-attitudes-changed-since-the-pm-took-office">trails</a> Keir Starmer, albeit not as badly as his party <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48607-voting-intention-con-21-lab-46-7-8-feb-2024">lags behind Labour</a>.</p>
<p>For the Conservatives, the one constant is that further trouble may be imminent. The party has removed the whip from Blackpool South MP, Scott Benton, who is appealing his <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/14/blackpool-mp-scott-benton-faces-commons-suspension-over-lobbying-scandal">35-day suspension</a> from the Commons over a lobbying scandal. If Benton loses his appeal, a recall petition will follow, potentially triggering a byelection in a seat classed as marginal, but on all current evidence a seaside stroll for Labour. </p>
<h2>Rochdale embarrassment</h2>
<p>There could be a very brief respite for Sunak – who may now face pointless calls for a new Conservative leader – as we head towards the farce of the Rochdale byelection on February 29, a contest Labour has managed to lose before it really started. The party <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/rochdale-by-election-why-labour-cant-replace-azhar-ali-and-what-happens-if-he-wins-13070586">dropped support</a> for its official candidate, Azhar Ali, after leaked audio revealed Ali’s anti-Israel conspiracy theory comments regarding the October 7 Hamas attack. </p>
<p>Starmer’s initial ill-judged move to shore up Ali was absurd. Rochdale is thus high on the embarrassment scale for Labour, but as an issue affecting the outcome of the general election, it is negligible. </p>
<p>After an exceptional Brexit election in 2019 – no election in the past century has ever been dominated by a single issue to that extent – the 2024 general election will be decided by the economy, cost of living, perceptions of competence and leadership. Normal politics in other words. And on all the dials, Labour appears way ahead.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223666/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Tonge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Disillusioned Conservative voters have had a string of opportunities to make their voices heard.Jonathan Tonge, Professor of Politics, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2226372024-02-05T16:27:32Z2024-02-05T16:27:32ZThe UK’s culture war is dying – but the next prime minister will have to stand up to plenty of populists overseas<p>British voters might have tired of the populist experiment that has strangled politics during the past few years, but, if he wins the next election to become UK prime minister, Keir Starmer will be be tested by a fresh wave of culture war distractions internationally.</p>
<p>Elections in Europe and the US in 2024 seem set to be dominated by divisive, self-styled anti-establishment candidates. And that has worrying implications not only for the UK, but also for the west’s shared interests in an increasingly unstable world.</p>
<p>Populism is experiencing a long drawn-out death in the UK. The country has lived with it since the Brexit referendum in 2016. It reached its political peak with the disastrous premiership of Boris Johnson, who rode roughshod over the <a href="https://theconversation.com/q-a-supreme-court-rules-boris-johnsons-prorogation-of-uk-parliament-was-unlawful-so-what-happens-now-124119">constitution</a>, and its economic nadir when Liz Truss and her chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng <a href="https://theconversation.com/liz-truss-resigns-as-prime-minister-the-five-causes-of-her-downfall-explained-192979">crashed the economy</a> so spectacularly.</p>
<p>For a time, it looked like Rishi Sunak would present himself as the leader who would do the right thing, run things properly, clean up the mess left by his predecessors. But as his electoral fortunes continued to wane, Sunak has reverted to a sort of Johnson-lite culture war approach to politics, unconvincing but just as divisive. </p>
<p>Nailing his colours to the mast of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/suella-braverman-warns-of-unmanageable-numbers-of-asylum-seekers-the-data-shows-we-hardly-take-any-214014">Rwanda policy</a> is a case in point. Practically nobody thinks it is a workable policy (including <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/rishi-sunak-question-rwanda-asylum-plan-bbc/">Sunak himself</a> when chancellor). </p>
<p>The idea to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda notably emerged in the dying days of Johnson’s tenure in Number 10 when <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jun/07/operation-save-big-dog-ramps-up-the-day-after-the-boris-music-died">“Operation Save Big Dog”</a> spewed up a series of desperate, headline-grabbing proposals designed to shore up support for the ailing PM.</p>
<p>Populism limps on, but the general election looks set to deliver the death blow that will put it out of its misery. The task for Starmer, then, seems deceptively simple. His party is commanding a substantial lead in the opinion polls simply by being a credible alternative to a government widely believed to have failed. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/c7b4fa91-3601-4b82-b766-319af3c261a5">Poll after poll</a> shows the Conservatives terminally lagging the opposition – with some indicating near wipeout for the governing party. And if Starmer wins office, he will have the opportunity to deliver that final blow to an era of populism that has become so tiresome.</p>
<h2>Greeting the neighbours</h2>
<p>But just as Britain seems willing to rejoin the grown ups and ready to regain its reputation as a sensible country which respects the rule of law and its international obligations, many of its allies overseas are ramping up their flirtations with populism. </p>
<p>Were he to win the keys to Downing Street, this would be a major strategic challenge for Starmer’s new government. And it is a challenge made all the more acute by the increasing volatility in the world, whether that be in the shape of Russia, China or the Middle East and the threats they pose to security and the economy.</p>
<p>With Brexit estimated to be costing the British economy <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-31/brexit-is-costing-the-uk-100-billion-a-year-in-lost-output?leadSource=uverify%20wall">£100 billion a year in lost output</a>, now would be a good time to reestablish constructive cooperation with the EU, working closer together for mutual economic and social benefit.</p>
<p>But so much for the hope London could normalise its relations with Brussels for the first time in a decade when one looks at the buildup to the European parliamentary elections. Far right, anti-European and populist parties across a host of member states are widely expected to <a href="https://ecfr.eu/publication/a-sharp-right-turn-a-forecast-for-the-2024-european-parliament-elections/">win significant support</a>, shifting the balance in the parliament and potentially the make-up of the European Commission.</p>
<p>In the nations of Europe there are nine parliamentary elections this year and populists are gaining ground across the continent. Austria and Portugal are likely to see a surge in right-wing support. Italy and the Netherlands have already seen their own. </p>
<p>Even those not holding elections in 2024, such as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/01/farmers-hurl-eggs-at-european-parliament-as-leaders-meet-for-summit">France</a> and <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/14221be9-4daf-41ca-98c2-5459799499fd">Germany</a>, are enduring internal challenge. And then there is the US.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/look-to-the-mainstream-to-explain-the-rise-of-the-far-right-218536">Look to the mainstream to explain the rise of the far right</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>There now seems very little standing in the way of Donald Trump securing the Republican nomination for November’s presidential election. There is still a long way to go before we see him back in the White House, but what seemed a laughable prospect not too long ago, now appears a realistic prospect. </p>
<p>And this time, Trump has scores to settle. He is no supporter of Nato, no fan of Ukraine and no sentimentalist about Europe. His instincts are isolationist, and his election would be destabilising to our continent.</p>
<p>These are the unstable circumstances that could surround the appointment of Starmer to the premiership. Having been seen as a clownish political basket case in recent years, no sooner has Britain thrown off the shackles of populism than it could be called upon to show lone leadership in the world. Starmer will need to defend Nato and stand up for Ukraine against political divisiveness. Let’s hope Starmer is up to the challenge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222637/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Barber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Just as the UK looks set to return to grown up politics, everyone else is installing radicals.Stephen Barber, Professor of Global Affairs, University of East LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2223192024-02-02T06:40:02Z2024-02-02T06:40:02ZLabour’s £28 billion green investment promise could be watered down – here’s why<p>Mathematicians will tell you that <a href="https://homework.study.com/explanation/how-is-28-a-perfect-number.html#:%7E:text=The%20number%2028%20is%20a,4%2C%207%2C%20and%2014.">28 is a perfect number</a>; it is not proving quite so perfect for Labour leader Keir Starmer.</p>
<p>Starmer is set to make a “final” decision on whether Labour will commit to <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2024-01-29/labours-28bn-green-pledge-to-be-scrapped-amid-exploitation-by-sunak-campaign">investing £28 billion a year</a> as part of its green prosperity plan. The party hasn’t confirmed whether this figure would be met by the end of the next parliament (fiscal year 2029-30), let alone the middle of it.</p>
<p>Unions, environmentalists and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/31/business-leader-urges-labour-to-stand-by-28bn-pledge-for-green-economy">investors</a> have given their support to the pledge. Others (some of them Labour Party members including <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2024/01/26/keir-starmer-ditch-labour-28bn-green-pledge-ed-balls/">Ed Balls</a>) say such a commitment is a liability. “Starmer the spendthrift” is already a club that the Conservatives and some newspapers have been using to try to close the yawning gap in the polls.</p>
<h2>2021 vision</h2>
<p>The £28 billion a year figure was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/sep/27/labour-promises-spend-28bn-year-tackling-climate-crisis">first announced</a> at Labour party conference by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves in September 2021.</p>
<p>Reeves said then that the time for dither and delay was over, and that she wanted to be known as the first green chancellor. She would spend £28 billion each and every year of the next parliament (should Labour take office).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A woman at a lectern with union jack colours." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572816/original/file-20240201-15-g4cmdf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Reeves has since poured cold water on earlier public spending promises.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/liverpool-united-kingdom-october-09-2023-2374491263">Martin Suker/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A year later more flesh was put on the bones. Labour announced the green prosperity plan which included a state-owned company called <a href="https://labour.org.uk/updates/stories/labours-plan-for-gb-energy/">Great British Energy</a> (responsible for investing in technologies less ready for market like tidal power) housing renovations and support for green steelmaking.</p>
<p>These announcements were made during a party conference in which the Labour leadership <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/09/theres-no-green-future-without-public-ownership">refused to allow a motion</a> to discuss public ownership of energy assets (wind turbines, transmission lines, grid-scale batteries).</p>
<p>It was also in the midst of the short-lived Liz Truss premiership. Then-chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9624/">fiscal statement</a> sent interest rates spiralling, and therein lies the trouble for Starmer and Reeves. When they made the promise two-and-a-half years ago, it was very, very cheap to borrow money. Now, not so much. </p>
<p>But the sums involved, even if borrowed without a windfall tax on energy giants, are <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/labours-28bn-green-spending-pledge-sounds-significant-but-wouldnt-be-enough-to-prevent-overall-public-investment-falling-13044921">expected</a> to hardly increase the national debt.</p>
<h2>The watering down begins</h2>
<p>From the beginning of 2023 Starmer and Reeves were remarkably quiet on the £28-billion figure and the green prosperity plan, which was launched by its main author Ed Miliband in <a href="https://labourlist.org/2023/03/consistent-and-clear-climate-leadership-milibands-speech-to-the-green-alliance/">March 2023</a>.</p>
<p>Labour’s opponents were not so reticent. On June 5, the Daily Mail ran <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12162745/Treasury-analysis-warns-Starmers-28BILLION-net-zero-strategy-drive-mortgage-costs.html">a front-page story</a> claiming families faced a £1,000-a-year bill for <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12162745/Treasury-analysis-warns-Starmers-28BILLION-net-zero-strategy-drive-mortgage-costs.html">“Labour eco plans”</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A worker in overalls unrolling insulation foam in the eaves of a house." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572821/original/file-20240201-17-5ek8kg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=492&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Renovating homes could make them more energy-efficient – and lower heating bills.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/work-composed-mineral-wool-insulation-floor-1017169942">Serhii Krot/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Days later, Reeves announced the first of several backwards steps on her 2021 commitment. She said that £28 billion would not be invested in a Labour government’s first year, but more likely in the second half of the five-year term. Further concessions followed in October, pushing the date back to the end of the parliament and introducing a rule that each pound of public investment would have to attract three from the private sector.</p>
<p>A series of interviews by Starmer in January 2024 threw further doubt on the £28-billion figure, and the Labour Party’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67993311">“campaign bible”</a> – instructions for prospective MPs on slogans to use and policies to quote to voters – was silent on the number.</p>
<p>Then, on Friday January 19, the Sun newspaper ran <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/politics/25422227/labour-ditched-green-spending-target-starmer/">another story</a> quoting an (unnamed) senior Labour figure who said the spending target would be scrapped.</p>
<p>An upcoming meeting may resolve matters one way or another. The date for Labour’s election manifesto to be finalised is <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/96f97332-36dd-44e5-8a24-9592965ca4f9">February 8</a>.</p>
<p>Supporters of the commitment are various unions, including the firefighters union, whose members are battling <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/21/public-risk-labour-drops-28bn-green-plan-fire-union-chief-matt-wrack">more floods and fires</a> as a result of climate change. The Labour climate and environment forum, an internal pressure group set up just over a year ago, has released <a href="https://lcef.cdn.prismic.io/lcef/bf737486-79cc-422c-a59b-58a6a483f6ad_LCEF_EssaysCollection_1801_LowRes.pdf">a 17-page report</a> listing the benefits of the proposed spend. Some labour frontbenchers are also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/jan/21/uk-needs-ambitious-green-plan-keep-up-allies-labour-frontbencher">vocal in their support</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A moorland with smoke rising from it and a fire engine in the foreground." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/572817/original/file-20240201-85962-cz6313.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Firefighters are on the frontline of increasingly extreme weather.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/ebbw-vale-wales-march-24-2022-2144761171">Richard Whitcombe/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Within the Labour party there is the familiar argument that you can only implement a policy once you are in government, and so anything that will scare voters or give opponents a stick to beat you with should be discarded. As per the title of an article in the Times by Peter Mandelson: “Few voters will be thrilled by Keir Starmer turning into another Greta Thunberg”.</p>
<h2>Choices have consequences</h2>
<p>There is a scene in the 1987 Stanley Kubrick film Full Metal Jacket that those who advocate Labour sticking to its (already watered down) spending commitment should show Starmer.</p>
<p>A marine recruit is quizzed by a ferocious drill sergeant about whether he believes in the Virgin Mary. The recruit, played by Matthew Modine, says he does not. The drill sergeant explodes and threatens the recruit with a beating if he does not change his answer. The recruit says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Sir, the private believes that any answer he gives will be wrong and the senior drill instructor will beat him harder if he reverses himself, sir!</p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gYxEIyNA_mk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The drill instructor respects his guts, and makes him leader of the platoon.</p>
<p>If Starmer sticks to the £28 billion promise he can expect headlines decrying “tax and spend” and “same old Labour”. If he dumps it, he will demoralise door knockers, unions and <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/labour-28bn-green-prosperity-plans-investment-energy-sector-net-zero">investors</a>. He will also not stop the attacks on him from the Conservatives and right-wing newspapers. They will add “flip-flopper” (something they’ve <a href="https://order-order.com/2024/01/30/labour-states-businesses-hate-uncertainty-as-it-flip-flops-on-28-billion-12-times/">already been saying</a>) to the list of his perceived sins. </p>
<p>They will, as the insight of the fictional marine suggests, beat him harder.</p>
<p>Climate change is, as the UK parliament <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48126677">agreed in 2019</a>, an emergency. Public support for action is <a href="https://strongmessagehere.substack.com/p/labours-28bn-question">surprisingly robust</a>. Doing so will require credibility that only comes from saying what you are going to do and how much you are going to spend. </p>
<p>Promising (to save) the world, but to do it on the cheap, makes you look silly or shifty – or both.</p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p><strong><em>Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?</em></strong>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Marc Hudson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Keir Starmer’s flagship climate change pledge has already been cut back significantly since 2021.Marc Hudson, Visiting Fellow, SPRU, University of Sussex Business School, University of SussexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2219012024-02-01T12:42:39Z2024-02-01T12:42:39ZSupervised toothbrushing in schools and nurseries is a good idea – it’s proven to reduce tooth decay<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/572161/original/file-20240130-23-ilrc2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=17%2C0%2C5734%2C3828&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/little-beautiful-african-girl-brushing-teeth-379214593">didesign021/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nearly a quarter of five-year-old children in England have tooth decay. In deprived areas of the country the proportion is even higher. And it isn’t just one problematic tooth – children with decay have, on average, three or four <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/oral-health-survey-of-5-year-old-children-2022">affected teeth</a>. It’s the <a href="https://www.bda.org/news-and-opinion/news/child-hospital-admissions-caused-by-decay-going-unchallenged/">most common reason</a> why young children aged from five to ten years are admitted to hospital. </p>
<p>When Labour leader Keir Starmer announced the party’s intention to expand <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/10/keir-starmer-announces-plan-for-supervised-toothbrushing-in-schools">toothbrushing programmes</a> in nurseries and schools, he <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-schools-toothbrush-dentists-b2476479.html">faced criticism</a> for planning to take away responsibility from parents and place further burden on schools. </p>
<p>But supervised toothbrushing for young children already takes place. It has been rolled out <a href="https://www.childsmile.nhs.scot/professionals/childsmile-toothbrushing/">in Scotland</a> and for <a href="https://www.gov.wales/designed-smile-improving-childrens-dental-health">deprived areas in Wales</a> and takes place in some areas in England. It is effective in reducing tooth decay, especially for children in deprived areas. It is not meant to replace brushing teeth at home, but strengthens good oral health practices.</p>
<p>As experts in dental health, we know all too well the impact poor oral health has on the lives of children and families. We are <a href="https://www.supervisedtoothbrushing.com/">leading a project</a> to improve toothbrushing programmes in nurseries and schools in England, and have recently developed an <a href="https://www.supervisedtoothbrushing.com/">online toolkit</a> to help schools, nurseries and parents as well as the NHS and local government.</p>
<h2>Painful – and preventable</h2>
<p>Tooth decay causes pain and suffering. It affects children’s daily lives, including what they eat, their speech and their self-esteem. It stops them from doing things they enjoy and can cause disrupted sleep. And tooth decay has an impact on school readiness and attendance. Children have to take time off school due to toothache and to attend <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/health-matters-child-dental-health/health-matters-child-dental-health">dental appointments</a>. </p>
<p>While going to hospital for dental extractions under general anaesthetic reduces the impact of decay on children’s lives, the event itself can be worrying for <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/sj.bdj.2014.331">children and their parents</a>. And poor oral health in childhood has lifelong consequences. Children with decay in their primary teeth are four times more likely to <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28571506">develop decay</a> in their adult teeth. </p>
<p>In England, treatment of decay in children and teenagers <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hospital-tooth-extractions-in-0-to-19-year-olds-2022/hospital-tooth-extractions-in-0-to-19-year-olds-2022">cost the NHS</a> over £50 million in the financial year 2021-22. </p>
<p>Toothbrushing at school and nursery with a <a href="https://www.cochrane.org/CD007868/ORAL_fluoride-toothpastes-different-strengths-preventing-tooth-decay">fluoride toothpaste</a> for young children is a way to tackle this issue. </p>
<h2>On the curriculum</h2>
<p>Supervised toothbrushing involves children brushing their own teeth as a group during the day, overseen by nursery and preschool staff or teaching assistants. It typically takes between five and ten minutes. </p>
<p>In Scotland, the <a href="https://www.childsmile.nhs.scot/professionals/childsmile-toothbrushing/">Childsmile Toothbrushing Programme</a> is offered to all children aged three and four at nursery and to some younger nursery children as well to some older school children. <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022034512470690">Research analysing the programme</a> has found it to be effective in reducing tooth decay, especially in children at greatest risk, such as those living in areas of <a href="https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/bmjopen/10/11/e038116.full.pdf">social deprivation</a>. In England, though, uptake of toothbrushing programmes is <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41415-023-6182-1">currently fragmented</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Girl brushes giant model teeth" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=595&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571198/original/file-20240124-17-217af0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=748&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Learning about brushing teeth.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zoe Marshman</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
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<p>What’s more, oral health is already part of children’s learning at nurseries and schools in England. The topic is included in <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/62cea352e90e071e789ea9bf/Relationships_Education_RSE_and_Health_Education.pdf">statutory guidance</a> for primary and secondary schools. Similarly, promoting oral health is included in the <a href="https://www.supervisedtoothbrushing.com/_files/ugd/b03681_311d9c3dcf6c43de9dbc05336733f105.pdf">statutory framework</a> for early years settings such as nurseries. </p>
<p>Running a supervised toothbrushing scheme is one way early years settings can demonstrate they have met the requirement about oral health. </p>
<p>Supervised toothbrushing in nurseries and schools does not replace toothbrushing at home. It serves to complement home toothbrushing to help young children learn and practice good oral hygiene.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221901/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Zoe Marshman, via the BRUSH project receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaborations South West Peninsula and Yorkshire and Humber through the Children’s Health and Maternity National Priority Programme, supported by the NIHR Applied Research Collaborations Yorkshire and Humber (NIHR ARC YH) NIHR200166 <a href="https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk">https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk</a>
The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR, the NHS or the Department of Health and Social Care. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kara Gray-Burrows, via the BRUSH project receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaborations South West Peninsula and Yorkshire and Humber through the Children’s Health and Maternity National Priority Programme, supported by the NIHR Applied Research Collaborations Yorkshire and Humber (NIHR ARC YH) NIHR200166 <a href="https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk">https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk</a> The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR, the NHS or the Department of Health and Social Care.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Peter Day, via the BRUSH project receives funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research Applied Research Collaborations South West Peninsula and Yorkshire and Humber through the Children’s Health and Maternity National Priority Programme, supported by the NIHR Applied Research Collaborations Yorkshire and Humber (NIHR ARC YH) NIHR200166 <a href="https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk">https://www.arc-yh.nihr.ac.uk</a> The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR, the NHS or the Department of Health and Social Care.</span></em></p>Tooth decay is the most common reason why young children aged from five to ten are admitted to hospital.Zoe Marshman, Professor/Honorary Consultant of Dental Public Health, University of SheffieldKara Gray-Burrows, Lecturer in Behavioural Sciences & Complex Intervention Methodology, University of LeedsPeter Day, Professor of Children's Oral Health and Consultant in Paediatric Dentistry, University of LeedsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2216112024-01-30T19:09:51Z2024-01-30T19:09:51ZLabour hasn’t won a UK general election since 2005. Will 2024 be any different?<p>Democracy faces challenges around the globe in 2024: <a href="https://time.com/6550920/world-elections-2024/">at least 64 countries</a> will ask their citizens to elect a government this year. </p>
<p>One of the most keenly observed will be the United Kingdom general election, likely to be held in November. The British Labour party has not won an election since 2005, and has lost the last four elections. At the last election in 2019, it was beaten handsomely.</p>
<p>The 2019 result saw the Conservatives win 365 seats of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, while Labour limped in with 202 seats. At that point, Boris Johnson was an immensely popular political leader, single-handedly delivering the Conservatives a historic win. </p>
<p>Famously, Johnson broke down part of Labour’s “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/11/keir-starmer-promises-red-wall-voters-the-basics-of-government-done-better">red wall</a>” seats – historically safe Labour seats in parts of Northern England. With Johnson’s emphatic win, and Brexit “done”, one writer predicted a further “decade of <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/riding-the-populist-wave/4D4C82C02F8A80A03FD2EC18B5D8CACD">conservative dominance</a>”. </p>
<p>Yet, the decade of conservative dominance did not arrive, and on current reading the Conservatives look destined for opposition. The most recent poll confirms Labour’s long-standing 20-point lead over the Conservatives <a href="https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/">(45%-25%)</a>. Since the Brexit Referendum, there has been unprecedented volatility in British politics – not dissimilar to the leadership churn in Australia. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-dogs-brexit-johnsons-missteps-about-to-send-weary-voters-to-another-election-as-the-eu-divorce-gets-ugly-123000">A dog's Brexit: Johnson's missteps about to send weary voters to another election as the EU divorce gets ugly</a>
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<p>Since the 2016 referendum, the Conservatives have chewed through five different leaders from David Cameron to Rishi Sunak. Each successive leader has been ensnared in a range of crises, from Theresa May’s record common defeats over Brexit, Johnson’s handling of COVID, Sunak’s problems with inflation, and of course, the blitzkrieg politics of shock and incompetence of Liz Truss. The Conservative party has <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/battles-on-the-backbenches-what-are-the-different-factions-in-the-conservative-party-12964275">fragmented</a> and factionalised, with the hardline right pushing to veto key policies.</p>
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<p>The volatility has led to wider governing instability. Since 2019, there have been five home secretaries, and a remarkable six chancellors (the role of federal treasurer in Australia). This turmoil takes an incalculable toll on effective government, as policy settings continuously change, and the public service are left reeling in the aftermath. For the Johnson government in particular, personal loyalty and factional support trumped appointing competent ministers. </p>
<p>The case of Priti Patel is instructive. She was forced to resign as minister for international development in the May government in 2017 after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/nov/08/priti-patel-forced-to-resign-over-unofficial-meetings-with-israelis">it emerged</a> she had not been candid about unofficial meetings with Israeli ministers, businesspeople and a lobbyist.</p>
<p>Despite <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/article/comment/handling-priti-patel-bullying-inquiry-has-fatally-undermined-ministerial-code">breaching</a> the Ministerial Code of Conduct for allegations of bullying staff, she later became home secretary in Johnson’s government. </p>
<p>The political in-fighting and instability in the Conservative party fuelled volatility, which in turn has lead to voter disaffection. Suella Braverman is the other striking example, initially appointed home secretary under Truss, she also <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/bringing-back-suella-braverman-after-rule-breach-sets-dangerous-precedent-say-mps-12759991">breached the ministerial code</a> by sharing an official document from her personal email address. Sunak later appointed her home secretary, in part to appease the hard right of the party. However, in office, she proved to be a political liability, and was dismissed by Sunak. </p>
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<p>The turbulence has been highly damaging for Sunak. Any political leader needs clean air to reset the agenda, but his government has been mired. He aimed to shape his agenda around five key priorities. One year on, one <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/rishi-sunaks-five-pledges-one-year">report card</a> suggests he had only achieved one of these goals, and the critical ones (especially on immigration) are “off track”. </p>
<p>Immigration is the political battlefield the Conservatives will hope will help them, along with an improving economy, to help them retain office. The resonances here with Australian politics are all too familiar, and Sunak will be hoping for a repeat of the Liberals’ emphatic “<a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/David-Marr-and-Marian-Wilkinson-Dark-Victory-9781741144475/">dark victory</a>” at the 2004 election. However, Sunak is widely seen as <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/richer-than-the-king-rishi-sunak-hammered-by-focus-groups-in-swing-english-seats_uk_64c24ed9e4b044bf98f3742f">out of touch</a> with the wider public – his and his wife’s <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/oct/22/rishi-sunak-rich-730m-fortune-prime-minister">vast wealth</a> has been the subject of much commentary.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/do-not-adjust-your-sets-with-truss-gone-the-uk-is-about-to-get-yet-another-prime-minister-192931">Do not adjust your sets: with Truss gone, the UK is about to get yet another prime minister</a>
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<p>This year’s election, then, looks increasingly like one Conservatives will lose – but it remains to be seen how well Keir Starmer’s Labour can win it. For some time, Labour has held a solid 20-point lead over the Tories in the <a href="https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/united-kingdom/">polls</a>, yet to take office, Starmer will need a record 12.7% <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/britains-labour-would-need-record-vote-swing-win-majority-research-shows-2024-01-16/">swing</a>. Starmer’s team will take inspiration from Anthony Albanese’s 2022 win in Australia, a solid election result off the back of a crumbling centre-right government, but hardly an emphatic victory. The lesson there is that you need to win seats, not necessarily the vote share. </p>
<p>The dilemma for Starmer is that he was elected leader in 2020 <a href="https://www.clpd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Keir-Starmers-10-Pledges.pdf">promising</a> to fulfil much of Jeremy Corbyn’s agenda. However, since that time, he has been seeking to recalibrate and reduce the range of his policy agenda. </p>
<p>Much of his energy has also been used to diminish the influence of the Corbyn-ite left in the party. While there is much long-term ambition in his five “missions”, some are light on detail, and others <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/keir-starmers-five-missions-labour-govern">rely on luck</a>. </p>
<p>Long-term Labour politician and scholar <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/30/keir-starmer-detached-labour-party-jon-cruddas">Jon Cruddas’</a> lament is that Starmer’s vision is detached from Labour’s history. Labour looks set to take office, but it could be off the back of a large scale disaffection from the wider public, with voter <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/1050929/voter-turnout-in-the-uk/">turnout</a> likely to decrease for the third election running.</p>
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<p><em>This article has been corrected. It originally stated Labour has not won an election since 2010. That has been changed to 2005.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221611/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Manwaring does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>After years of tumult in the ruling Conservative party, Labour looks set to take office. But it is no sure bet, and could be off the back of a large scale disaffection from the wider public.Rob Manwaring, Associate Professor, Politics and Public Policy, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2211912024-01-22T15:07:57Z2024-01-22T15:07:57ZIt’s 100 years since Labour’s first prime minister – but Keir Starmer will want to avoid comparisons with Ramsay MacDonald<p>There was a time when to ridicule – or condemn – the Labour leader of the day, a newspaper cartoonist needed only to append under their subject’s nose a luxuriant moustache. That was all that was necessary to suggest that whoever they were drawing was the “new <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/person.php?LinkID=mp02872&displayNo=60">Ramsay MacDonald</a>”. </p>
<p>Writers needed only prefix the word “Mac” to the leader’s name with the same in mind. Popular memory is finite, however. “Keir MacStarmer” would be meaningless. </p>
<p>The Labour leader would nevertheless prefer for people not to draw comparisons with Macdonald, tempting though this may be in the year that marks a century since MacDonald became Labour’s first prime minister. There was a reason Starmer’s parents named him Keir, and not Ramsay. </p>
<p>Keir Hardie was the saintly founder of the party, almost too principled for power. Ramsay Macdonald was the man who betrayed the party he helped to found. </p>
<p>The first Labour government didn’t survive 1924, and the next, in 1929, MacDonald crashed after two years by joining the Conservatives in a national government. Economic crisis was his justification. But for many in the <a href="https://socialist.net/great-betrayal-national-government/">party he had abandonded</a>, personal weakness on the part of the man Winston Churchill dubbed the “boneless wonder” was a better explanation.</p>
<h2>History doesn’t repeat but it can rhyme</h2>
<p>One parallel that can be drawn between MacDonald’s Labour and Starmer’s is inexperience. In 1924, only a few Labour ministers – Arthur Henderson and J. R. Clynes – had been in government before, six years previously in the Lloyd George coalition. Those with ministerial experience who may assume office in 2024 – such as Yvette Cooper and Hillary Benn (whose <a href="https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw253764/The-Labour-Cabinet-1929?LinkID=mp57991&role=sit&rNo=4">grandfather was in MacDonald’s cabinet</a>) – will have been excluded from power for 14 years.</p>
<p>In the event of a Labour win in 2024, Starmer, like MacDonald, will have being prime minister as his very first experience in government. That is unusual, though less so recently: neither Tony Blair nor David Cameron had held any office before they held the highest of them all.</p>
<p>But Blair and Cameron also left office younger than MacDonald was and Starmer would be on assuming it. Becoming prime minister in their sixties meant that they had a past – the Conservatives aim to tar Starmer with his, as they did with MacDonald a century before. </p>
<p>Ramsay Mac had been <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/transformingsociety/parliament-and-the-first-world-war/video-resources/ramsay-macdonald-opposing-entering-ww1/">prominently anti-war</a> during a period of lustful militarism. Though he was not a communist, his opponents found it easy to imply an <a href="https://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2022/9/21/the-red-menace-britains-communist-scare-of-the-1920s">association</a> with what was then regarded as an existential threat to the realm.</p>
<p>For those who wish to see it, therein lies peril: Starmer, for all his protestations that his was a working class background is also “Sir Keir”, the metropolitan barrister. Labour lore has it that McDonald all-too gladly accepted the aristocratic embrace when he went into government with the Tories, abandoning the working classes. At the following election Labour was smashed, and out of office – for 14 years.</p>
<p>With little else to hand, the Conservatives will seek to capitalise. No more provocative occupation could be wished for in red wall leafleting than “human rights lawyer”. A deep and raking dive into Starmer’s casework as a lawyer has <a href="https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/25290381/sir-keir-starmer-free-lawyer-save-baby-murderers/">already begun</a> by today’s tabloids, and an attempt to sow the seeds of a conspiracy theory already made in groundless claims about his role in the CPS decision to drop the case against sex offender <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/60213975">Jimmy Savile</a>.</p>
<p>In 1924, the tabloid press sought to do similar with <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/russia/zinoviev/">MacDonald</a>, hoping to thwart his rise to the premiership by <a href="https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/archives_online/digital/russia/zinoviev/">falsely associating</a> him with Bolshevik politician Grigory Zinoviev.</p>
<h2>Different times</h2>
<p>The circumstances around the election that brought Labour to power in 1924 could hardly be more different from those that could do so in 2024, however. Conservative prime minister Stanley Baldwin, who had been elevated to the premiership without an election in 1923, did something Theresa May, also elevated to the premiership without an election, emulated in 2017. </p>
<p>He went to the country within a year of taking office, years earlier than he needed to, and lost his majority. May also called an election, narrowly won government again and was out within a couple of years.</p>
<p>Baldwin’s decision has puzzled historians (May’s was merely a mistake). One interpretation is that he most feared his era’s Boris Johnson: David Lloyd George. It was thought that the best way to ‘dish’ the dishonest, dynamic, divisive leader of the Liberals was for Labour to replace his party as the second party of government.</p>
<p>Another interpretation is that Baldwin felt it best to give the working classes a taste of power – to house-train Labour. With the kind of accommodation the British ruling classes usually displayed when faced with potentially uncontrollable threats, they acceded to sharing power – and maintained most of their privileges.</p>
<p>But today, Starmer has the most powerful of all campaigning messages: “time for a change”. Fourteen years of power is usually deemed enough for any party, and that’s without what even the government’s supporters would concede as being the chaos of the latter half of it.</p>
<p>Nevertheless the Labour prospectus of 2024 – to the chagrin of those to the left of the party, and to the fear of those to the right – is characterised by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/08/keir-starmer-labour-leader-edward-colston-statue">moderation</a>. To reach Downing Street for the first time in 1924, Labour had to overcome the public perception that it was extreme. Imagined though that perception might have been, it was potent. After all, no one knew what a Labour government might be like. </p>
<p>Labour in 2024 has to overcome imagined histories – the idea that Labour governments always lead to crises. The Conservatives, and their print and broadcast proxies, will seek to ensure that voters have a very certain sense of what Labour governments are like. And they may privately maintain what looks like an increasingly overoptimistic hope that no Labour leader named Keir should ever win power.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/221191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Martin Farr does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ramsay MacDonald was Labour’s first ever PM but he ended up being booted out of the party he helped found.Martin Farr, Senior Lecturer in Contemporary British History, Newcastle UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2209582024-01-11T15:52:41Z2024-01-11T15:52:41ZPost Office scandal: what the lack of action tells you about Britain’s polarised politics<p>It’s hard to hear anything about the Post Office scandal without being outraged at the way innocent people have been treated by a system stacked against them. The bosses of a powerful institution simply didn’t believe and didn’t listen to its people.</p>
<p>More than 700 sub-postmasters and postmistresses were wrongly convicted of theft, false accounting and fraud. Democracies are meant to protect ordinary people from this kind of ordeal, so it’s reasonable to ask why Britain’s political leaders have been so slow to speak up, let alone act.</p>
<p>The answer goes to the heart of the weakness of modern party politics in Britain, and the consequences of the polarisation that drives it.</p>
<p>If this is “one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in history”, as prime minister Rishi Sunak claims, there is an intriguing question as to exactly why mainstream politics only seems outraged about it now. After all, the story was broken by <a href="https://pressgazette.co.uk/news/post-office-horizon-it-scandal-journalists/#:%7E:text=The%20first%20investigation%20into%20Horizon,which%20was%20established%20in%202020.">Computer Weekly 14 years ago</a>. It has been the subject of an in-depth BBC podcast helmed by Nick Wallis, and has received regular attention in the magazine Private Eye. It has been raised <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/search?startDate=2019-01-11&endDate=2024-01-11&searchTerm=post%20office%20horizon&partial=False&sortOrder=1">multiple times in parliament</a>, and there is even an <a href="https://www.postofficehorizoninquiry.org.uk/">official inquiry</a> slowly working its way through what happened.</p>
<p>The Post Office scandal has been largely denied the attention it deserves. Until, that is, ITV broadcast a drama based on the story which was watched by 9 million people during a slow news week in early January. But why did it take a television mini-series to spur political leaders (and journalists) into action?</p>
<h2>Tragic but not ‘useful’</h2>
<p>There are two observations about the behaviour of politicians in recent days that perhaps tell us something about the nature of modern party political democracy. The first is that something being wrong or unjust, even on an epic scale, is an insufficient precondition for <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/978-1-137-48706-3">political action</a>.</p>
<p>The victims of the Post Office scandal have lacked a constituency. Their cause didn’t identify with a party or movement, and the systemic failure of the institution did not provide convenient evidence for any side of any number of contemporary <a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/policy-institute/assets/divided-britain.pdf">political cleavages</a> identifiable in Britain. Taking on the cause would do nothing to further any existing national arguments about, say, immigration or taxation, by giving ammunition for one side to damage the other. Consequently, it remained present but largely suppressed below the surface of popular attention.</p>
<p>The second observation is that now it has so dramatically broken through to the top of the agenda, the story is feeding “politics as usual” in a way that it failed to do so for all these years. It has become a cheap weapon of party warfare. Political leaders and partisan hacks are scrambling to use the scandal for their own advantage.</p>
<p>None was more opportunist than Conservative deputy chairman, Lee Anderson, who used prime minister’s questions to call for the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, to “clear his desk” for his part in what happened.</p>
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<p>Aside from anything else, Anderson will have had at least half his mind on the electoral threat the Lib Dems currently pose to vulnerable Conservative MPs. Davey has been rather self-critical of his time as Post Office minister during the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. He has acknowledged that he <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/08/ed-davey-accuses-post-office-of-conspiracy-of-lies-as-he-defends-role-in-scandal">should have done more</a>, or been more sceptical of what he was being told by officials and the Post Office which, he says, was <a href="https://news.sky.com/video/the-post-office-was-lying-on-industrial-scale-to-me-and-other-ministers-says-sir-ed-davey-13044288">“lying on an industrial scale”</a>.</p>
<p>But Kevin Hollinrake, the current Post Office minister, has held the office since October 2022 – and he has no more substantive information today than he did a fortnight ago. Yet he has only acted decisively now, a few days after the television drama aired – at a moment when the only option left was to interfere in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2024/jan/10/no-precedent-why-commons-approach-to-post-office-scandal-has-lawyers-nervous">independent decisions of the courts</a>.</p>
<p>This is not the only example of petty party politics. There has been other daft populist comment including from Nigel Farage, who is demanding to know why Labour leader Keir Starmer did nothing about this scandal when he was director of public prosecutions. The answer, as Farage and others know well, is simple: these were <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmjust/497/49704.htm">private prosecutions</a> brought by the Post Office.</p>
<p>The wheels of justice have now finally begun turning and the power of the state deployed. But it is only because an ITV drama has made this injustice relevant to everyday party politics, after more than a decade. For the victims whose lives have been wrecked by this terrible scandal, it is welcome news, of course. But it illustrates a frightening blind spot in the functioning of today’s divisive democracy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220958/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stephen Barber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The victims of the Horizon scandal had no political constituency and served no existing partisan debate.Stephen Barber, Professor of Global Affairs, University of East LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2205852024-01-05T15:01:41Z2024-01-05T15:01:41ZShould we believe Rishi Sunak’s hint that the election will be in October? What the evidence tells us<p>So now we know. After weeks of speculation, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said he is <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67883242">“working on the assumption”</a> that a general election will take place in the second half of this year. That’s just a few months before the latest possible date of January 28 2025. </p>
<p>The choice of an autumn election does make sense for Sunak and the Conservatives. With the polls showing the Labour opposition on a <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/48017-voting-intention-con-22-lab-45-29-30-nov-2023">stable and substantial lead</a>, it makes sense for the Conservatives to buy some time. The idea would be to try to make inroads into Labour’s lead before setting an election date. </p>
<p>Much rests on the fate of the economy. A year ago, Sunak promised to halve inflation, grow the economy and get debt falling. Independent analysis shows that inflation has halved, but <a href="https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/comment/rishi-sunaks-five-pledges-one-year">less success on economic growth and falling debt.</a> </p>
<p>Between now and the autumn, Sunak will hope that the economy shows signs of recovery. An autumn election will also give voters time to feel the economic benefits of the tax cuts that are anticipated in the spring, which could potentially provide the Conservatives with a boost in the polls. </p>
<h2>Why ‘autumn’ means ‘October’</h2>
<p>There are other reasons why an autumn 2024 election makes sense. During the post-war period, October has proven to be a popular month for elections – even though the last time an election was held in October was 1974. Although over recent decades, most general elections have taken place in the spring, between 1950 and 1974, four of the nine elections were held in October, with only one taking place in May. </p>
<p>No post-war general election has been held in August, September or November. If an election is held in the autumn, October would seem the most likely month if history is anything to go by. </p>
<p>There is also the British weather to consider. While there isn’t strong evidence to show that voters are less likely to turn out in bad weather, it is very much the received wisdom in the UK that this is the case, and given the decision comes down to Sunak, he may not think it worth risking winter weather. This would imply October over, say, November or December. </p>
<p>Historically, turnout in October elections has been similar to turnout in spring elections – and turnout is a major factor for the Conservatives. Age is now the most significant predictor of voting behaviour in UK general elections and <a href="https://www.britishelectionstudy.com/bes-findings/age-and-voting-behaviour-at-the-2019-general-election/#:%7E:text=Overall%2C%20the%20relationship%20between%20age,for%20Labour%20and%20the%20Liberal">age is linked to turnout</a>. </p>
<p>The group most likely to vote for the Conservatives are those aged 65 and over – which is also the group most likely to vote at all. A higher overall turnout should therefore be a strategic goal for the Conservatives. </p>
<p>The 18-24 group is most likely to vote Labour but least likely to vote overall so an October vote is again a sound move. With hundreds of thousands of students returning to universities away from home in the autumn, and potentially not yet registered to vote at their term-time address, there is potential to minimise the younger vote.</p>
<h2>A clash with the US election</h2>
<p>An October election would mean the UK vote would take place just weeks ahead of the US election on November 5. The prospect of two of the world’s leading democracies going to the polls within weeks of each other is an exciting one for election enthusiasts. </p>
<p>On the other hand, there is the prospect of two new administrations coming into power around the same time, needing to find their feet quickly in an unstable geopolitical environment, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/176d4b78-1e9a-45c9-8c3c-a74e758ec22f">following two elections that may be heavily influenced by polarisation and misinformation.</a>.</p>
<p>With the eyes of the world focused on a potentially divisive US election, Sunak may feel that a low-key campaign plays in to his hands, focusing on re-electing the incumbent to ensure stability. </p>
<h2>Don’t rule out a spring election yet</h2>
<p>The date for the election is not yet set in stone, however. Following the repeal of the <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06111/">Fixed-term Parliaments Act</a>, the choice of election date lies in the hands of the prime minister. </p>
<p>The rollercoaster of British politics in recent years has shown us that much can change in six months. It would therefore be unwise to rule out a spring election, even after Sunak’s heavy hint.</p>
<p>The Labour opposition has accused Sunak of <a href="https://news.sky.com/video/general-election-sir-keir-starmer-says-rishi-sunak-is-squatting-in-downing-street-13042181#:%7E:text=Sky%20News-,General%20Election%3A%20Sir%20Keir%20Starmer%20says%20Rishi%20Sunak%20is%20'squatting,and%20months%20in%20Downing%20Street.'">“squatting” in Downing Street</a> and claims he is running scared, knowing that the polls show him on course for a loss. Sunak may therefore instead opt to call Labour’s bluff, signalling an autumn election in public but preparing for a May election in private. Sunak’s words do leave the door open for a spring election, as “working assumptions” can easily be changed.</p>
<p>Those who still think <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/uk-heading-for-a-may-general-election-is-the-worst-kept-secret-in-parliament-labour-13038533">May is a possible election month</a> will point to the announcement of an <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67826928">earlier than expected spring budget date</a>. Headline-grabbing tax cuts, along with some positive economic forecasts may embolden the prime minister to take a gamble and move sooner rather than later.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220585/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gemma Loomes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There are reasons to hold off until the autumn – but there are other clues that still point towards May.Gemma Loomes, Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Keele UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2198872023-12-15T14:54:55Z2023-12-15T14:54:55ZMark Drakeford: what the resignation of Wales’ first minister means for the country and the Labour party<p>This week, Mark Drakeford announced his <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-67702232">resignation</a> as Wales’ first minister after five years as leader. Back in 2018, Drakeford built his <a href="https://skwawkbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/manifesto-english-print.pdf">leadership bid</a> on a platform of “21st-century socialism”. As the manifesto reveals, the mantra was rooted in the ideas of “the radical tradition of Welsh socialism”, which would drive the creation of “a more equal, fair and just society”. </p>
<p>While it’s difficult to assess his legacy so soon, it is worth reflecting on whether these initial aims have been achieved. And what does Drakeford’s departure mean for the future of Wales and the Labour party?</p>
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<p>Arguably, the COVID-19 pandemic was the defining feature of Mark Drakeford’s tenure. During this period, Drakeford raised the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/04/covid-crisis-makes-mark-drakeford-most-recognisable-leader-in-22-years-of-welsh-devolution">profile</a> of devolution in Wales to the rest of the UK. His measured and cautious approach to the pandemic was <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/sunday-times-declares-mark-drakeford-comfortably-the-most-popular-uk-leader/">popular</a> and a <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/democracy-uk-voting-reform-votes-28283666">stark contrast</a> to that of Boris Johnson. </p>
<p>This popularity was reinforced when Drakeford led Welsh Labour to a decisive victory in the 2021 Senedd <a href="https://research.senedd.wales/research-articles/election-results-2021-what-s-changed/">election</a>. It further extended the party’s more than 100 years of electoral dominance in Wales.</p>
<p>In June this year, Drakeford <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/more-senedd-members-among-mark-drakefords-top-priorities-for-next-12-months-as-conservatives-blast-out-of-touch-plans-12910448">emphasised</a> Senedd reform as one of his <a href="https://www.gov.wales/senedd-reform">priorities</a>, including increasing the number of Senedd members. That is potentially a hard sell to the public, but Drakeford saw it as a “once in a generation” opportunity.</p>
<p>While the Welsh pandemic response appeared to be popular, Drakeford’s government is certainly not immune to criticism. Serious questions hang over the consequences of certain Welsh government COVID <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/welsh-government-coronavirus-covid-mistakes-21107573">measures</a>. To compound this, the rejection of a Wales-specific COVID inquiry has led to <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/first-minister-urged-to-right-a-wrong-and-commit-to-wales-covid-inquiry/">accusations</a> that Drakeford is shying away from scrutiny.</p>
<p>More recently, the Welsh government has faced significant <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/swansea-20mph-welsh-government-confusing-27941424">backlash</a> over its <a href="https://theconversation.com/wales-residential-speed-limit-is-dropping-to-20mph-heres-how-it-should-affect-accidents-and-journey-times-210989">policy</a> to drop the residential speed limit to 20mph, which appears to have led to <a href="https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/politics/discontent-grows-towards-mark-drakeford-28157637">concern</a> even within Labour ranks.</p>
<p>When it comes to achieving 21st-century socialism, five years on and in nearly all measures – health, poverty, education – Wales is struggling. The Welsh government’s ambitions have been hamstrung by a lack of <a href="https://www.gov.wales/written-statement-welsh-government-response-uk-autumn-statement-2023">funding</a>, the confines of Wales’ devolved powers and the extreme circumstances of a global pandemic. And while these constraints cannot be ignored, the rhetoric of 21st-century socialism is not being met in reality.</p>
<h2>Wales and Westminster</h2>
<p>Drakeford’s legacy leads to questions concerning the future relationship between Welsh and UK Labour. Central to Drakeford’s <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/13691481231158296">rhetoric</a> during his tenure was to position Welsh Labour as the <a href="https://policymogul.com/key-updates/31452/mark-drakeford-s-speech-to-the-labour-party-conference">defender</a> of Welsh interests against a harmful Conservative government. </p>
<p>With the potential of Labour governments in both Cardiff and London, this line of argument may soon come under pressure. Starmer has been <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67608097">clear</a> that the economy is simply not in a position for public spending to be significantly increased. </p>
<p>The Welsh and UK parties are also <a href="https://nation.cymru/news/welsh-labour-deputy-leader-says-she-doesnt-want-policing-devolved-to-wales/">at odds</a> when it comes to the future of the union and the UK constitution.</p>
<p>If a Starmer government takes a different view on the constitution, or if the spending taps are not turned on sufficiently, would the new Welsh Labour leader seek to build a closer relationship with Starmer? Or, if competing agendas emerge, will the “<a href="https://sochealth.co.uk/the-socialist-health-association/sha-country-and-branch-organisation/sha-wales/clear-red-water/">clear red water</a>” between Welsh and UK Labour become choppier? Any new Welsh Labour leader will need to deal with these potential issues.</p>
<p>The phrase “clear red water” is a legacy of Drakeford’s that stretches back to before he became first minister. As special advisor to former first minister Rhodri Morgan in 2002, Drakeford coined it to mark the Welsh approach to policy making as distinct to new Labour, based on classic Labour principles and rooted in nationally bounded <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0952076712455821?casa_token=5-5e05bH1v4AAAAA%3AZQj1ky-kb3Jk61ha3dZnmfO03wBy0VRDXNRTY0X3aeixkdm3xV_51PRz4HHdnCqlkNF-Ui_pX5iO">politics</a>. </p>
<p>The saying has almost become a cliché by now, but if Labour wins the next general election, Drakeford’s successor will need to take inspiration from its purpose of emphasising the distinctive needs of Wales. </p>
<p>Drakeford made people across the UK take notice of Wales and devolution during the pandemic. Whichever phrase is deployed next – 21st-century socialism, clear red water, the Welsh way – the next Welsh Labour leader will need to fight Wales’ corner within their own party.</p>
<h2>The future of 21st-century socialism</h2>
<p>Drakeford stressed throughout his time as first minister that 21st-century socialism could only be achieved through practical action. His methodical and calm <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/14/england-chaos-boris-johnson-wales-mark-drayford-wales-legacy">approach</a> to governance has won him supporters both within and beyond the Labour party. </p>
<p>However, whether due to the nature of devolution, the lack of funding, the impact of the pandemic or the limitations of Welsh Labour’s programme for government, the 21st-century socialism Drakeford promised has not materialised.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/universal-basic-income-wales-is-set-to-end-its-experiment-why-we-think-thats-a-mistake-218206">Universal basic income: Wales is set to end its experiment – why we think that’s a mistake</a>
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<p>It is unlikely that the next leader will articulate their vision in the same way as Drakeford, who tried to root himself within Welsh Labour traditions. But if they are serious about pursuing progressive policies, they will need to be bold in tackling the challenges plaguing Wales today. </p>
<p>They will need to be innovative in their approach to public policy and the economy, and forthright in demanding adequate funding from the UK government, no matter which party is in power at Westminster.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219887/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nye Davies does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>What does the future hold for Wales and Welsh Labour in the wake of Drakeford’s resignation?Nye Davies, Lecturer in Politics, Cardiff UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2191602023-12-05T16:56:24Z2023-12-05T16:56:24ZWhy did Keir Starmer pen the ‘Margaret Thatcher’ article for the Telegraph? Our research suggests it may yield votes<p>Labour leader Keir Starmer has received <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/sir-keir-starmer-tries-to-woo-tory-voters-telling-them-take-a-look-at-labour-again-13021634">some criticism</a> from within his own party for publishing an <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/02/voters-have-been-betrayed-on-brexit-and-immigration/">article</a> in the Telegraph, a famously rightwing newspaper, in which he made a direct appeal to voters who have previously supported the Conservative party.</p>
<p>The choice of this publication and Starmer’s decision to seemingly praise Conservative prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who “sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism”, has caused dismay among some supporters. But while this response is understandable, Starmer’s strategy is supported by comparative evidence. </p>
<p>In our recent <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00323217231178979">study</a>, we examined election results in 15 democracies, including the UK, Austria, Denmark and New Zealand, over approximately 30 years between 1986 and 2015. There is a striking pattern in the data – namely that when the public perceives a party becoming more right wing, that party subsequently gains more votes. This boost is all the more pronounced during recessions.</p>
<p>It’s crucial to note that this finding does not mean that parties always gain votes when they shift their policies to the right, because the public does not always recognise when parties attempt to change their policies. The public must actually perceive the rightward policy shift.</p>
<p>Our finding holds even when controlling for public opinion shifts. That means it is not an artefact of parties shifting right in response to rightward shifts in the public.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A screenshot of Keir Starmer's article in the Telegraph." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=245&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/563621/original/file-20231205-19-33ae0w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=308&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Starmer’s decision to write for the Telegraph and to list Margaret Thatcher as one of three change maker prime ministers dismayed some supporters and even many of his party colleaugues but it may have been a strategically sound move.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/12/02/voters-have-been-betrayed-on-brexit-and-immigration/">The Telegraph</a></span>
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<p>This means that leftwing parties gain votes by moderating their image towards the centre of public opinion, while rightwing parties similarly gain from radicalising their images. This perhaps helps explain Starmer’s decision to write warmly of Thatcher’s legacy. The move will arguably send a credible signal to the public that Labour has committed to a more rightwing position. </p>
<p>Apart from referencing Thatcher, Starmer made several policy-related statements that would associate his party with a rightward position, including criticising the Tories for “raising the tax burden to a record high”, and warning that “difficult choices” will have to be made so that “every penny is accounted for”.</p>
<h2>Perceptions of economic confidence</h2>
<p>So, why do parties gain votes when the public perceives them as shifting right? Some additional findings in our paper address this question. First, the public tends to view parties as being more competent at managing the economy when they perceive the party shifting rightward. That’s why we also find that the vote gains from parties’ perceived rightward shifts are amplified when the economy deteriorates. Economic recessions prompt citizens to prioritise parties’ economic competence.</p>
<p>As has been seen in Labour’s case, changing party leadership potentially shifts public perception – and there is <a href="https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123417000047">research</a> supporting that hypothesis. But if citizens are to cast informed votes, parties must be able to successfully change public perceptions of their policy positions too. Although, there is also <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00489.x">research</a> that suggests that parties often fail to successfully convey their policy shifts to voters.</p>
<p>So while Starmer’s words and choice of publication may have caused consternation among some Labour voters and colleagues, there is a logic to it. Our key finding is that when the public broadly perceives a party shift to the right, this perceived shift signals the party’s competence to manage the economy. That enhances the party’s image and its ability to win votes in the next election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219160/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Data across multiple decades suggests Starmer will benefit from giving the impression that he is shifting to the right.Luca Bernardi, Senior Lecturer in Politics, University of LiverpoolLawrence Ezrow, Chair professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2170212023-11-08T14:53:17Z2023-11-08T14:53:17ZIsrael, Palestine and the Labour party history that has made Keir Starmer’s position so difficult<blockquote>
<p>I said: “I found the British still very emotional about Palestine. Why?” And he said: “It’s associated, don’t you think with partisanship with one side or the other. I can’t think of any colony or mandate that was as demanding intellectually and emotionally as Palestine.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>These were the words of Harold Beeley, Middle East adviser to Labour foreign secretary Ernest Bevin, as described in an interview with author <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Out_of_Palestine.html?id=1U64cQAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">Hadara Lazar</a>. </p>
<p>There is a general assumption in British politics that the job of a leader of the Labour party in managing internal divisions over the Israel-Palestine conflict presents a more difficult set of challenges than those confronted by the Conservative leader. </p>
<p>It should not be assumed that the Conservatives are <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-warsi-resigns-over-gaza-tories-vexed-history-on-israel-comes-back-to-haunt-them-30058">entirely immune to divisions</a> on this issue. But insofar as there is something to this proposition, it can largely be explained by the Labour party’s much longer and deeper traditions of competing pro-Zionist and pro-Arab factions.</p>
<p>In August 1917, three months before the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration#/media/File:Balfour_declaration_unmarked.jpg">Balfour Declaration</a> formally expressed British support for a Jewish national home in Palestine, the Labour party had issued its own statement of support for a Jewish return to a Palestine liberated from Ottoman imperialism.</p>
<p>Party figures like Arthur Henderson, J.R. Clynes, Ramsay MacDonald and George Lansbury, as well as trade union bosses, all made public declarations of support for the idea of a Jewish national home in Palestine.</p>
<p>But if the loudest anti-Zionist voices in British politics in the 1920s tended to come from the right of the Conservative party and newspapers like the Daily Express and Daily Mail, there was also opposition on the left. Labour figures like James Maxton regurgitated Soviet denunciations of Zionism as the enemy of the "Arab national revolutionary movement”. </p>
<p>Beatrice Webb, one of the founders of the Fabian Society, characterised the conflict as one between Arab “natives” and Jewish exploiters possessed of “superior wealth”. She also lapsed into <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/albion/article/abs/isaac-kramnick-and-barry-sheerman-harold-laski-a-life-on-the-left-new-york-allen-lane-the-penguin-press-1993-pp-xii-669-3500-isbn-0713991062/78E0E4650A5D894FB252A61F8059CEA8">cruder antisemitic fantasies</a> about reversing the process by which the Holy Land had been handed over “to the representatives of those who crucified Jesus of Nazareth and … deny that he is the Son of God!”</p>
<p>Nevertheless, by the 1940s, influential figures in the Labour movement, including Nye Bevan, Hugh Dalton, Richard Crossman and Michael Foot, had brought a discernibly pro-Zionist influence to bear. Labour’s Palestine policy, Crossman declared, “was the result of a profound conviction that the establishment of the national home is an important part of the Socialist creed”. </p>
<p>Foot went so far as to <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/7359721/Michael-Foot.html">inform</a> the House of Commons in July 1946: “If I were a Jew and lived in Palestine, I should certainly be a member of the [Jewish paramilitary organisation] Haganah.”</p>
<p>This did not, however, translate into support for the establishment of Israel in 1948 – thanks largely to Bevin. His abandonment of Labour’s pro-Zionist conference resolutions so angered party chairman Harold Laski that he denounced Bevin as “an outrageous blot on the whole Labour movement”.</p>
<p>It is, therefore, a simplification to speak of a pro-Zionist consensus in the Labour party in the decades either side of Israel’s establishment in 1948. The party did nevertheless remain a welcoming home for Zionist socialists.</p>
<p>A crucial shift occurred after the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-39960461">1967 six-day war</a>. This was when Christopher Mayhew (Bevin’s former protégé at the Foreign Office in the 1940s) established the Labour Middle East Council to lobby for Arab causes within the party. </p>
<p>A decade after that, a new generation of leftwing activists came to the fore. Ken Livingstone, George Galloway, Jeremy Corbyn and others launched a successful challenge to the party’s right wing and its traditional control of the party’s anti-Zionist networks. Mayhew, a staunch anti-communist, found himself out of sync with the zeitgeist and abandoned Labour for the Liberal Party.</p>
<h2>Internal rivalries</h2>
<p>There has thus been a powerful tendency for the antagonisms of the Arab-Israeli conflict to map onto Labour’s own internal rivalries and the factional battle for control over the party. Between 1945 and 1967, this usually manifested itself as a clash between a pro-Zionist left and an anti-Zionist right. By the 1980s, the battle lines had been redrawn.</p>
<p>At this point, the Conservative party woke up to the fact that Labour’s wrangling presented it with some interesting political and electoral advantages. Labour’s traditional stronghold of support among the <a href="https://www.abebooks.co.uk/9780198274360/Jewish-Community-British-Politics-Alderman-019827436X/plp">British Jewish community</a> eroded, partly as a result of <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261379419300721">longer-term socio-economic factors</a>, but also because of the visibility of the anti-Zionist left.</p>
<p>Margaret Thatcher, sharply attuned to Jewish sensitivities within her Finchley constituency, and an early patron of the Conservative Friends of Israel group, was too astute an electoral tactician to pass up the opportunity. It was no coincidence that Labour modernisers like Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair, in their bid to revive the party’s electoral credibility, took very deliberate steps to distance themselves from the anti-Zionist far left.</p>
<h2>Starmer’s predicament</h2>
<p>The extreme <a href="https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollchap/edcoll/9781789906417/9781789906417.00023.xml">factional antagonisms</a> of the 2015-2019 period of Corbyn’s leadership clearly, therefore, had deep political and emotional roots in the history of Labour’s engagement with the Middle East.</p>
<p>Keir Starmer’s political positioning on the 2023 Gaza conflict is shaped by his experience of the more recent chapters of that history. He has sought to rebuild trust with the British Jewish community and distance the party from what many see as the toxic image it acquired under Corbyn.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-hamas-war-there-is-an-important-difference-between-a-humanitarian-pause-and-a-ceasefire-217157">Israel-Hamas war: there is an important difference between a humanitarian pause and a ceasefire</a>
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<p>Starmer is now all too aware that Conservative strategists seeking to tar him with the brush of Corbynism will use any faltering in his position to argue that nothing has changed and that British Jews should not switch back to Labour.</p>
<p>On the other hand, he will also be aware of the risk that senior Labour party figures, sensitive to the costs of alienating Muslim voters, might break ranks – <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67353019">as several of them</a> <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-67238594">already have</a>. This is on top of the wider dangers that stem from a political polarisation manifesting along ethnic lines, and which is already facilitating disturbing upsurges in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/antisemitic-islamophobic-offences-soar-london-after-israel-attacks-2023-10-20/">antisemitic and Islamophobic</a> activity. </p>
<p>These are all pressures and dangers that can be expected to grow as the Gaza conflict intensifies and its human costs mount. The question for Labour is whether Starmer will emerge from it looking like a prime minister in waiting or merely the beleaguered patriarch of a house divided against itself.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/217021/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Vaughan is affiliated with the Jewish Labour Movement</span></em></p>Labour frontbencher Imran Hussain has resigned over the party’s failure to support a ceasefire in Gaza.James Vaughan, Lecturer in International History, Aberystwyth UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2148022023-11-03T16:39:18Z2023-11-03T16:39:18ZMy mathematical model cautions Rishi Sunak against shifting to the right ahead of the next election<p>Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gave the strongest indication yet that he intends to call the next election for around October 2024 when he released a <a href="https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1717100621457711185">promotional video</a> asking “What can a country achieve in 52 weeks?” to mark his anniversary of coming to power.</p>
<p>My mathematical model suggests that the time before that election would not be well spent shifting his party further to the right, despite recent signs that this is his intention. </p>
<p>The model also shows that his rival Keir Starmer should avoid shifting to the left if he wants to win. </p>
<p>Pollsters are <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.electoralcalculus.co.uk%252Fhomepage.html&data=05%257C01%257Cd.brody%2540surrey.ac.uk%257Cc38aa8b73a104ca84b6a08dbda44bfcd%257C6b902693107440aa9e21d89446a2ebb5%257C0%257C0%257C638343761024216679%257CUnknown%257CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%253D%257C3000%257C%257C%257C&sdata=nJWSFlpkJB6Ct7atu9O%252FuU6Ui16%252FLJGuzAAIzCB6Bi4%253D&reserved=0">in the process of releasing information</a> that helps give us a sense of how an election might go. But, crucially, these are a <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-do-you-read-an-election-poll-41204">snapshot</a> of what would happen were an election be held tomorrow – not a prediction of a future vote. </p>
<p>The numbers in a poll will, within error margins, determine the vote share of an election if it were held immediately. Translated into probability, in a two-party race, if political party A has 52% support and party B 48%, then the likelihood of party A winning an election held tomorrow is about 100%.</p>
<p>Now, suppose that the election is to take place in a year. What do we learn about the winning probabilities from the numbers 52 and 48 then? For most people, the likelihood of party A winning now seems closer to 52% than 100%. </p>
<p>But what if the election is to take place in two weeks? Or, in three months? To bridge the winning probability today with that on the future election day, we need a mathematical model.</p>
<h2>How models work</h2>
<p>For a model to be useful in a political context, it should contain at least the following ingredients. First, the results of the current poll. Second, the relative positions taken by different candidates or political parties such as left, centre and right. </p>
<p>Third, when the election is taking place. And fourth, how clearly information about the candidates and their policies are communicated to the electorate. </p>
<p>The way information is communicated is important because politics, after all, is about how politicians communicate with voters. If no information relevant to the political parties and their candidates is given to the electorate in the above example, then after one year, 52% of voters, having not learned anything new about the parties, will still vote for party A. </p>
<p>So, in fact, the winning probability will approach back to 100%. Information is crucial in influencing the outcomes of future elections. </p>
<p>For a two-party race, I have previously worked out a <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41884-019-00021-2">formula</a> for the probability of winning a future election that incorporates these ingredients. The result shows, for instance, that if you are leading the poll today, then it is in your interest not to release any new information. Why rock the boat <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/02/keir-starmer-labour-tuition-fees-politics-sketch&data=05%257C01%257Cd.brody@surrey.ac.uk%257Cc38aa8b73a104ca84b6a08dbda44bfcd%257C6b902693107440aa9e21d89446a2ebb5%257C0%257C0%257C638343761024216679%257CUnknown%257CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0=%257C3000%257C%257C%257C&sdata=pHmghLXwnRAY7FgAcJNVmTh9CV6f/kOXixs94f8XfTs=&reserved=0">when you’ve got a comfortable lead</a>? </p>
<p>This helps explain Labour’s current approach of not making many solid commitments and why Boris Johnson <a href="https://www.thenational.scot/politics/19382569.dominic-cummings-reveals-boris-johnson-avoided-andrew-neil-election-interview/">minimised his media appearances</a> in the run up to the 2019 election. </p>
<h2>Misinformation could cover a shift to the right</h2>
<p>When there are three or more political parties, the situation becomes more complicated but <a href="https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.230584&data=05%257C01%257Cd.brody@surrey.ac.uk%257Cc38aa8b73a104ca84b6a08dbda44bfcd%257C6b902693107440aa9e21d89446a2ebb5%257C0%257C0%257C638343761024216679%257CUnknown%257CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0=%257C3000%257C%257C%257C&sdata=hf3AUhPUbFZ229FQRcOTKEjCKUhXkajMHS/8hkP9wHI=&reserved=0">also more interesting</a>. </p>
<p>For Sunak, the model advises against more moves to the right if the election is to be held in a year. </p>
<p>The model contains various parameters that need to be calibrated carefully. But let’s assume that the gap in the policy positions within the political spectrum between the Labour and the Liberal Democrats is about the same as that between the Liberal Democrat and the Conservatives (with Labour on the left and the Conservatives on the right). </p>
<p>Let’s also assume that the current poll suggests that Labour is leading the Conservatives by 15 points, which is roughly where polling has stood for some time.</p>
<p>The outcome is that if the Conservatives were to shift their position further to the right, while the other two parties remain where they are, that would only enhance the likelihood of winning the election if the electoral competition is overshadowed by noise such as rumours, speculations, and possibly disinformation.</p>
<p>In other words, when you are lagging behind in the poll, a more extreme position can only be beneficial when it is accompanied by a lot of noise that shifts the public consensus. </p>
<p>This might help explain why we’ve seen bursts of inaccurate information coming from the government lately. Sunak’s false suggestion that he was saving voters from having to use seven recycling bins when no such plan was in motion and that he would scrap a <a href="https://fullfact.org/environment/sunak-environment-proposals/">nonexistent meat tax</a> are two examples. </p>
<p>This strategy of confusion would seem like a good idea, according to the model. It’s hard not to note that the only recent byelection win on Sunak’s books lately has been in Uxbridge, where there are <a href="https://valent-projects.com/news-and-insights/evidence-of-online-manipulation-in-uk-public-debate/">credible concerns</a> that misleading information about the local ultra low emission zone fuelled the campaign. </p>
<h2>Risky strategies</h2>
<p>However, there is a catch. No single political party can control how much information is circulated. So unless the electorate is totally confused by the Conservatives’ information machine and no other party is able to counter its narrative, the strategy will backfire. The model suggests that Conservatives may instead lose by an even wider margin.</p>
<p>For Labour, the model says that leaning further to the left offers nothing but downside. Shifting just slightly to the right, however, would yield some gains – again provided that total confusion does not prevail. </p>
<p>To make Starmer’s stance effective, Labour must prevent confusion and assure transparent messaging. Thus the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/05/labour-figures-from-1997-victory-warn-starmer-against-cautious-approach">advice from Labour figures</a> from 1997 that Starmer should make his policy positions clear could not be more apt. </p>
<p>It should be stressed that my mathematical model does not say anything about which policy position or communication strategy is good for the public. It merely tells you how they will affect the winning probabilities. </p>
<p>Sunak has himself emphasised the <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/anti-maths-mindset-needs-to-change-so-uks-economy-can-grow-rishi-sunak-says-12859176">importance of mathematics education</a>, but perhaps he should start this endeavour with his own political advisers. If nothing else were to change, and even if Sunak were to optimise his communication strategy, the model says he will only enhance his support rate by at most 7%. That’s far from enough to win.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214802/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dorje C Brody receives funding from UK EPSRC. </span></em></p>Sunak wants everyone to be better at maths. Here’s what taking his own advice would mean for his election campaign.Dorje C. Brody, Professor of Mathematics, University of SurreyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2160262023-10-20T12:23:37Z2023-10-20T12:23:37ZAstounding byelection losses are about more than Tory MPs’ conduct – the party has a big general election problem<p><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/71d1d0b8-a134-4d83-8de6-8b6d197abb1c">Byelection results</a> in Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire represent new lows for a Conservative government that will soon be obliged to confront its mortality. </p>
<p>Even allowing for the capacity of byelections to produce startling results, the scale of collapse was jaw-dropping. The swing of 23.9% in Tamworth was the second largest Conservative-to-Labour shift we have seen, as a 19,634 majority was removed. Only 53 seats were safer for the Conservatives than Tamworth at the 2019 general election. </p>
<p>With a 20.5% swing from the Conservatives to Labour, Mid Bedfordshire was not far behind in the “wow” stakes. It lay among the Conservatives’ 100 safest seats, a constituency held by the Tories since 1931. </p>
<p>These reverses are part of a sustained pattern. Since June 2021, there have been four Conservative byelection losses to Labour on an average 19.8% swing, accompanied by four Conservative defeats to the Liberal Democrats, on even bigger swings, averaging 29.5%. </p>
<p>Combined, these eight Conservative byelection losses represent the second largest total ever seen in a period of less than two-and-a-half years. </p>
<p>Only the period that saw 13 byelection reverses for Harold Wilson’s Labour government between September 1967 and December 1969 offered a more concentrated session of defeats – and Labour duly lost the 1970 general election.</p>
<p>The circumstances triggering some recent byelections did not help the Conservatives. Tamworth was the seat vacated by Chris Pincher, the former Conservative MP who resigned over sexual misconduct and whose downfall also <a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-resignation-how-the-prime-ministers-tumultuous-week-played-out-186607">triggered the end of Boris Johnson’s term as prime minister</a>. </p>
<p>Mid Bedfordshire was up for grabs after <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/14/nadine-dorries-failure-to-resign-officially-as-mp-frustrates-sunaks-attempt-to-reset-tories">Nadine Dorries’s repeated threats to resign</a> finally came to fruition amid increasing vocal complaints from her constituents that she was failing to represent them. </p>
<p>But these individual circumstance don’t explain it all. The fact is that Conservatives electoral problems are more general. </p>
<p>What about the Uxbridge and South Ruislip byelection, it might fairly be asked? The Conservatives indeed <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66264317">held that seat</a> last July. Yet local circumstances pertained in a way they will not in a national contest. </p>
<p>In any case, even the Uxbridge win came at the cost of 6.7% swing to Labour. A repeat of that at the national level would probably see the Conservatives, friendless beyond their own ranks at Westminster, removed from government.</p>
<h2>When is a byelection not ‘just a byelection’?</h2>
<p>But these are merely byelections, it might be contended. Yes, but it is beginning to feel like 1996 again, the year before Labour last swept to power. </p>
<p>That year, the old South East Staffordshire constituency (which became Tamworth in 1997) saw a very similar Conservative to Labour swing (22%). We knew what was coming in the general election.</p>
<p>The Conservatives could until recently hold onto the view that they were still very much in the game. Local election leads for Labour (five points in 2022, nine in 2023) were far less than those in opinion polls. But those big leads have now materialised in byelections. </p>
<p>Equally as ominously, Keir Starmer’s lead over Rishi Sunak as preferred prime minister <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/710316/prime-minister-voting-intention-in-great-britain/#:%7E:text=Prime%20Minister%20preference%20in%20the%20United%20Kingdom%202020%2D2023&text=Approximately%2020%20percent%20of%20people,leader%20of%20the%20Labour%20party.">has expanded</a>. Remember that the less preferred candidate has not prevailed since Margaret Thatcher beat Jim Callaghan way back in 1979.</p>
<p>Conservative hopes for a conference bounce have not materialised. When your biggest conference announcement is what you are cancelling – <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-decision-to-curtail-hs2-and-embrace-cars-means-for-the-uks-cities-214873">in this case HS2</a> – it’s not a great look. Stopping trains and boats will not win elections. </p>
<p>It is not true that the mood at the Conservatives’ gathering in Manchester was gloomy. It was far livelier than might have been anticipated given the polling gloom – but in a “the band played on” type of way. </p>
<p>Labour’s conference in Liverpool was, perhaps unsurprisingly, buoyant. The party stopped issuing passes at 18,500, with capacity reached and was turning away would-be exhibitors. A palpable sense of expectation was evident, unusual in a party which has managed to lose seven of the last ten general elections. </p>
<p>The Liberal Democrats’ conference in Bournemouth focused on converting their 91 second places in 2019 into victories. Realisation of such ambitions will overwhelmingly hit the Conservatives given 80 of those second places lie in Tory seats.</p>
<p>Yet perhaps the most important domestic political event during conference season took place away from the throbbing halls. Labour’s byelection capture from the Scottish National Party of Rutherglen and Hamilton West offered Keir Starmer a much clearer route to an overall majority via Scottish gains than had hitherto been the case in the years of nationalist impregnability.</p>
<p>Although pencilled in for next September in Liverpool, Labour might not be needing another conference. October 10 2024 looks the <a href="https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/general-election-october-2024-lord-hayward-inflation-drop-rishi-sunak-b1083290.html">likeliest election date</a> for a variety of reasons, in which case the campaign will be well underway. </p>
<p>Much can happen in the meantime of course but Labour is relentlessly closing off opportunities for Conservative attacks. Almost all the evidence suggests the electorate is, to adjust a recent conference slogan, likely to take a long-term decision for a rather different future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216026/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Tonge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The results represent more than just dissatisfaction with local MPs – the national picture has shifted.Jonathan Tonge, Professor of Politics, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2139232023-10-11T11:38:27Z2023-10-11T11:38:27ZLabour’s immigration policy: will focus on ‘security’ win an election?<p>Labour’s immigration policy is starting to take shape. Migration, historically, has been a <a href="https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-319-64692-3">tricky issue for the party</a>. So it’s perhaps not surprising that they are taking a leaf from the Conservative playbook by focusing on border security. But Labour has shifted the villain from asylum seekers to smuggling gangs. </p>
<p>Speaking at Labour party conference, the shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, announced a new cross-border unit of hundreds of police officers to go after smugglers. Labour leader Keir Starmer has vowed to <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/keir-starmer-promises-to-smash-people-smuggling-gangs">“smash the gangs”</a>, to treat people smuggling on par with terrorism and to use serious crime orders to freeze smugglers’ assets and restrict their movement. </p>
<p>Starmer and Cooper also recently travelled to The Hague for talks with Europol (the EU’s law enforcement agency) about sharing criminal data – something that ended after Brexit. And noises have been made about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/14/labour-will-treat-channel-people-smugglers-as-terrorists-says-starmer">cooperating with Europe</a> on a returns agreement, where the UK would accept a quota of asylum seekers who arrive in the EU, in exchange for being able to return people who cross the channel. </p>
<p>While not the inflammatory comments of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/suella-braverman-warns-of-unmanageable-numbers-of-asylum-seekers-the-data-shows-we-hardly-take-any-214014">current home secretary, Suella Braverman</a>, Labour’s rhetoric so far still squarely frames asylum as a security issue. This is not the progressive approach some on the left will be hoping for. It feeds into the populist idea that migration is always a crisis, and has an element of inhumanity and utilitarianism – migrants are people, not trade agreements.</p>
<p>But given the public’s current attitudes on migration (nuanced) and trust in the Conservatives on the issue (low), it’s an electorally safe approach.</p>
<p>The suggestion of working with Europe, which gives the Conservatives ammunition to frame Labour as wanting to rejoin the EU, isn’t much of a risk. Brexit and the topic of Europe are arguably <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/45910-britons-would-vote-rejoin-eu?redirect_from=%2Ftopics%2Fpolitics%2Farticles-reports%2F2023%2F07%2F18%2Fbritons-would-vote-rejoin-eu">less divisive</a> than in the last election. </p>
<h2>Who is this approach for?</h2>
<p>The focus on security is a bid to win back key “red wall” voters who fled to the Conservatives in 2019, and <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/45511-will-focus-immigration-help-conservatives-among-th">care slightly more</a> about immigration than other groups. This is evident in Starmer’s recent statement that those who oppose his proposals on migration are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/sep/14/labour-will-treat-channel-people-smugglers-as-terrorists-says-starmer">“unbritish”</a> – a dog-whistle to precisely these “patriotic left” voters. </p>
<p>But the characterisation of red wall voters as <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/35893-stereotypical-image-red-wall-residents-accurate?redirect_from=%2Ftopics%2Fpolitics%2Farticles-reports%2F2021%2F05%2F17%2Fstereotypical-image-red-wall-residents-accurate">simply anti-migrant isn’t accurate</a>. While migration is a priority, it still sits behind more pressing concerns like the <a href="https://www.labourtogether.uk/all-reports/red-shift">cost of living crisis</a>. Focusing too much, or taking too hard a line on immigration won’t win them voters and could lose some younger left-wing voters who <a href="https://www.labourtogether.uk/all-reports/red-shift">favour increased immigration</a>. </p>
<p>To that end, Starmer has also confirmed that Labour would overturn the new law that stops cross-Channel migrants <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/4b7f862e-3c81-4f34-8013-12f51fe32b01">claiming asylum in Britain</a>, scrap the policy to <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/keir-starmer-says-he-would-scrap-the-rwanda-scheme-even-if-it-is-legal-and-working_uk_6522972de4b0a32c15bee9df">deport people to Rwanda</a> and end the use of barges and hotels to house asylum seekers. </p>
<p>These are all positive developments for those wanting a more progressive policy, and would at least fracture the current system, which is inhumane and unworkable.</p>
<p>Public attitudes on immigration have <a href="https://www.ippr.org/files/2022-11/a-new-consensus-november-22.pdf">shifted dramatically in the last decade</a>. On the whole, evidence suggests that attitudes have <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk-public-opinion-toward-immigration-overall-attitudes-and-level-of-concern/">softened</a> and the UK public now has among the <a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/news/uk-attitudes-to-immigration-among-most-positive-internationally-1018742-pub01-115">most positive attitudes</a> towards immigration internationally. </p>
<p>At the same time, the public <a href="https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/infographics/migration-eurobarometer-2018/">overestimate</a> both the number of asylum seekers as a <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/thinking-behind-the-numbers-understanding-public-opinion-on-immigration-in-britain/">proportion of immigration</a> and the number of migrants overall. Focusing heavily on asylum seekers or net migration targets will only feed into these misconceptions.</p>
<p>One area where we haven’t heard much from Labour is on labour migration, arguably the more pressing issue in terms of Britain’s economic security. Starmer <a href="https://theconversation.com/labour-sounds-like-the-tories-on-immigration-but-its-policy-goes-back-to-its-trade-union-roots-195221">suggested last autumn</a> that future policy would involve trade unions. If Labour gets the balance right they could craft a more progressive policy that treats migrants respectfully while also gaining support from unions and a disgruntled business sector. </p>
<h2>Will this strategy work?</h2>
<p>The public already <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/45511-will-focus-immigration-help-conservatives-among-th">trusts Labour more on immigration</a>, and has little faith in the current government to <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/trust-conservative-government-have-right-immigration-policies-down-7ppts-march-braverman">deliver on their promises</a>.</p>
<p>Targeting criminal gangs as the security threat on the border might be electorally rational. Labour can talk tough to appease the voters it needs to win back, while keeping with a more ideologically coherent position that doesn’t paint migrants themselves as a problem. As we know from the reaction to Ed Miliband’s <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/what-starmer-can-learn-from-miliband-s-mug/">“Controls on immigration” mug</a> in 2015, anti-migrant sentiment does not play well for Labour.</p>
<p>As the election nears, Braverman is going to keep talking about asylum seekers, which will <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13501763.2018.1531909">ramp the issue up the agenda</a>. But this is a <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-uks-unworkable-immigration-plans-allow-the-government-to-blame-others-for-its-failure-202207">distraction</a> from her own party’s failures on the issue – and more a bid for party leadership than a stance as home secretary.</p>
<p>The general public’s attitudes on migration are more nuanced than Braverman’s rhetoric would suggest. Labour’s security focus might make electoral sense, but it still pulls from <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/secure-borders-safe-haven-integration-with-diversity-in-modern-britain">old playbooks</a>, both Labour and Conservative. </p>
<p>Starmer could take this opportunity to tell a more positive story about immigration, carve a clear progressive position for Labour and move the discussion away from numbers – a strategy that will never deliver. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/net-migration-how-an-unreachable-target-came-to-shape-britain-206430">Net migration: how an unreachable target came to shape Britain</a>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Erica Consterdine does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Labour has vowed to crack down on smuggling gangs.Erica Consterdine, Senior Lecturer in Public Policy, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2153202023-10-10T16:15:48Z2023-10-10T16:15:48ZKeir Starmer’s chance to sparkle: Labour leader finally puts his working class credentials to work for him<p>Starmer’s challenge in his speech to the Labour party conference was to present himself as a prime minister in waiting. To achieve this, he had to embody both authority and authenticity, credibility as a leader but also sympathy with the experiences of ordinary Britons. </p>
<p>He also had to present his own origins, as well as a direction of travel. He effectively needed to turn his story into strategy. As <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/authenticity-is-great-but-so-is-strategy-a6669596.html">one journalist</a> wrote about Jeremy Corbyn: “Authenticity is great, but so is strategy.”</p>
<p>Stories provide insight into leadership and substantiate claims of authenticity, a quality that <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/newe.12259?saml_referrer">“has become a key battleground in contemporary politics”</a>. Donald Trump was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/12/11/who-is-the-authenticity-candidate-of-2016-yup-its-donald-trump/">portrayed as the “authenticity candidate”</a> ahead of the 2016, for example.</p>
<p>With more attention than ever on his speech, this was an unparalleled chance to deploy a resource hitherto ignored by Starmer and weaponised by his opponents: his <a href="https://www.moreincommon.org.uk/our-work/research/the-respect-agenda/">personal life</a>. A <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1742715005049348?casa_token=asoLnWdDEuUAAAAA:gEfuUTnr5dRlVJwLDt8_cTKsRwUGnmyJTBtCAmzS19xRFJLLb4m1Hdrp-GMWvp9rKlLfomuKMEc&journalCode=leaa">leader’s life story</a> is an important tool for influencing potential followers. </p>
<p>As Robert Shrimsley, chief political commentator at the Financial Times, <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/819182e1-59ea-4ffd-951e-ea99cc1a9e3d">has argued:</a> “If the Labour leader’s character is to be the central issue at the next election, Starmer must settle that question to his advantage before the Conservatives answer it for him.”</p>
<p>Starmer made some progress on this matter, incorporating references to his own life. He spoke of holidays to the Lake District with his wife, and of going there every year with his parents. He referenced his childhood in Surrey when discussing the green belt, and snobbery towards his father’s vocational skills on the topic of working-class university aspirations.</p>
<h2>‘I grew up working class’</h2>
<p>The Conservatives have capitalised on Starmer’s knighthood and turned what should be credentials into a weakness. They repeat the word “Sir” over and over when referring to Starmer in order to imply that he is upper class rather than working class – his actual background. </p>
<p>Starmer addressed this head-on – finally – at the conference. Alongside references to his sister, who is a careworker, he stated clearly that he “grew up working class” and had been fighting all his life: “I’ve felt the anxiety of a cost of living crisis before. And until your family can see the way out, I will fight for you.”</p>
<p>The Tory line of attack is partially explained by the fact that Starmer embodies many virtues that Tories traditionally lay claim to. A knighthood reflects public service and dedication. In some cases, including Starmer’s, it shows someone has worked their way up from humble beginnings. </p>
<p>Crucially, Starmer was knighted for “services to law and criminal justice” – territory that Conservatives would traditionally claim as their own. This explains attempts to turn Starmer’s achievements against him.</p>
<p>His tactic of emphasising the need for Labour to be a “party of service” and of painting the Conservatives as unable to understand the lives and challenges of the working people is his response. “Why Labour?” he asked the conference. “Because we serve your interests.”</p>
<h2>A chance to seize the narrative</h2>
<p>As Labour leader, Starmer has been private and distant. His deputy, <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/angela-rayner-i-overshare-keir-starmer-undershares-nwvxx97xh">Angela Rayner</a>, has remarked that his greatest weakness is that he “undershares”. This is a problem for a political leader in an age of personalised politics, as is reflected in numerous criticisms levelled at Starmer, such as that he lacks <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/06/keir-starmer-tony-blair-reform-new-labour-90s">personal charisma</a>.</p>
<p>Starmer has a great deal of authenticity to draw upon. As the son of an NHS nurse with Still’s disease, he spent much of his childhood experiencing the NHS as the relative of a worker and a patient. </p>
<p>So it is surely not a coincidence that he announced that money saved from clamping down on non-domiciled tax status would pay for the regeneration of the NHS. That, after all, was the tax arrangement <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-non-dom-an-expert-answers-our-questions-about-the-tax-status-claimed-by-rishi-sunaks-wife-and-other-wealthy-people-180928">enjoyed by Sunak’s wife for so long</a>. This was Starmer turning the personal-narrative-as-strategy back on his opponent.</p>
<p>Today was Starmer’s big chance to reinforce his working-class credentials, and more broadly his claims of authenticity. This was perhaps the last big chance before an election next year. </p>
<p>It was also chance to capture attention and discussion on his own terms (even if a <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/2023-10-10/we-are-the-healers-keir-starmer-to-promise-decade-of-national-renewal">glitter-wielding protester</a> had other plans). In the end, we saw Starmer realise the value of turning a personal story into strategy. He strengthened his vision of the future by looking inwards at his personal life, and backwards at his origins.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/215320/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The need for the Labour leader to reclaim his personal narrative had become urgent – so did he succeed?Alex Prior, Lecturer in Politics with International Relations, London South Bank UniversityClara Eroukhmanoff, Senior Lecturer in International Relations, London South Bank UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2149202023-10-09T12:07:51Z2023-10-09T12:07:51ZWhy Labour’s plan to ‘rewrite Brexit’ might not be as politically risky as it sounds<p>Labour leader Keir Starmer has <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6bdc4e88-c2ed-44ad-aa7d-c70bc358e027">committed</a> to rewriting the UK’s Brexit deal with the European Union when it comes up for review in 2025, if his party is elected to government. He has said he wants a closer trading relationship and better terms than former prime minister Boris Johnson negotiated and has argued this is a necessary step for future national growth. </p>
<p>Labour is certainly not proposing to rejoin the EU, but this nevertheless seems a risky topic for the leader of a party that has so often been on the back foot of Brexit. But is it? Much has changed since the fraught years that followed the 2016 vote to leave the EU – and even since the 2019 election, which was fought and won on a Brexit campaign. </p>
<p>Unlike the years between 2016 and 2019, the Labour leader’s position is now more aligned with that of the public. A majority of people now <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/45152-which-leave-voters-have-turned-against-brexit">believe</a> it was wrong to leave the EU, with just a third saying it was the right decision. </p>
<p>Even among those who voted to leave, just over a quarter now think it was the wrong decision or are no longer sure. A combination of new voters entering the electorate since 2016 and some Leave voters changing their mind has meant that the public voice on the issue is markedly different than it was then and in 2019.</p>
<p>However, this is not the only factor Starmer will have to consider as he shapes his position on the UK’s future relationship with the EU. Another development in recent years is that Brexit is no longer seen as <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/trackers/the-most-important-issues-facing-the-country">an important issue</a> – and it is not even close to being one. </p>
<p>As of October 2, just 16% of people rated leaving the EU as one of the most important issues facing the country. That is far below the economy, crime, immigration, health and the environment. </p>
<p>Belief in its importance is even lower amongst those who voted Leave (9%) – the people most likely to see renegotiating the current terms with Europe as a risk. This has two implications – one good and one bad for Starmer. </p>
<p>The first is that, simply put, people may just not care if he rewrites the Brexit deal. They have more urgent matters on their minds. However, they might equally feel that in reopening the discussions, the Labour leader would be focusing on issues that they have <a href="https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/keir-starmer-labour-brexit-deal-public-opinion">had enough of</a> when the country faces substantial social and economic challenges.</p>
<p>So, there are opportunities and risks for Starmer. Much like when the EU issue became almost <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2016/01/05/how-immigration-became-a-eurosceptic-issue/#:%7E:text=EU%2520immigration%2520takes%2520off%2520with,five%2520years%2520of%2520EU%2520membership.">synonymous with immigration</a>, how much the Brexit issue cuts through to the public, and the effect it has, may depend on which issues it becomes associated with, if any. </p>
<p>There is a <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/6bdc4e88-c2ed-44ad-aa7d-c70bc358e027">suggestion</a> from Starmer that he is attempting to link the negotiations with the the economy and cost of living generally (by far the most important issues), as well as a vision for a more hopeful future. This may prove successful since a third of the public, and nearly half of Labour voters, <a href="https://www.ukonward.com/reports/hotting-up/">already think</a> Brexit has had a role to play in the cost of living crisis.</p>
<h2>Minds on other things</h2>
<p>Overall, the issue is not likely to be a live one, drowned out by much more urgent problems. Starmer may see this as a positive, meaning he can negotiate outside of the public eye. Or he may attempt to tie the negotiations, even loosely, to a broader programme to heal the country’s economy and society.</p>
<p>Much could also still change. As of June, <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/survey-results/daily/2023/05/31/5f827/1">44% of people had no idea</a> what Starmer’s position on the EU was, and <a href="https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/trackers/which-political-party-would-be-the-best-at-handling-brexit">just 19% think</a> Labour is the best party to handle Brexit (tied with “none”, and below “don’t know” at 25%). </p>
<p>Where there is ambiguity, there is possibility for change. Which direction that is likely depends on which issues the negotiation becomes associated with, and how Labour is perceived on those issues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Devine receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK). </span></em></p>Once upon a time, questioning the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU was effectively taboo. But times have changed and the public might be more on board than before.Daniel Devine, Fellow in Politics, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2145922023-09-29T12:54:25Z2023-09-29T12:54:25ZLabour set to win Rutherglen and Hamilton West byelection – but only a thumping majority will herald big Scottish gains next year<p>More than three years after the COVID law-breaking that cost the SNP’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-65671806">Margaret Ferrier</a> her job as MP, voters in Rutherglen and Hamilton West will be summoned to the polls on October 5 for a byelection to choose her successor. Why is Labour’s Michael Shanks very widely expected to win? And what would a Labour gain here mean?</p>
<p>The first thing to say is that this is one of Scotland’s friendlier seats for Labour. Since the independence referendum in 2014, the party has been frozen out of 52 of Scotland’s 59 constituencies, including many of its former strongholds in Glasgow and the central belt. Rutherglen is one of the few seats that it has won in that period – <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutherglen_and_Hamilton_West_(UK_Parliament_constituency)#Elections_in_the_2010s">albeit just once and very narrowly</a>, during the SNP’s dip in 2017. Clearly the party can win there, given a little bit of national tailwind.</p>
<p>How favourable are those winds these days? The <a href="https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Internal_VI_Scotland_September2023_W.pdf">most recent Scotland-wide poll</a> gives the SNP almost the same lead over Labour (38% to 27%) as it had in that 2017 general election (37% to 27%). But the poll before had the parties tied on 35%, and generally the SNP lead has been well down in single digits for months, so the <a href="https://pollingreport.uk/articles/snp-extend-lead-by-7-points-casting-doubt-on-labours-rutherglen-lead">national picture points to a Labour gain</a>.</p>
<p>Of course, national polling can be an unreliable guide to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17457289.2023.2169446">byelections</a>, which typically have much lower turnout and often see outbreaks of tactical or protest voting. What is happening or what has happened locally is also far more important in a byelection than a general election, when voters always have one eye on the national picture. </p>
<p>What should make Labour so well fancied in Rutherglen is that most of these things point in its favour, too.</p>
<p>Since the SNP supplanted Labour as the most popular party among <a href="https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/about-us/news/low-income-voters-in-scotland/">working-class Scots</a>, it also supplanted Labour as the party that suffers more from low turnout. That victory in Rutherglen camp; Hamilton West in 2017 was owed not to Labour gains, but a <a href="https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-scottish-labour-shouldnt-fear-an-snp-resurgence/">collapse in the SNP vote driven largely by abstention</a>. The unionist vote in Scotland looks more reliable; it is the <a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/18101471.general-election-2019-turnout-won-snp/">nationalist vote that waxes and wanes</a>, along with enthusiasm about independence.</p>
<h2>SNP struggles</h2>
<p>Insofar as this byelection is to be a protest vote, Labour looks well placed, being in opposition at both Westminster and Holyrood and being the challenger party in this seat. Anger has probably subsided since Ferrier was first found to have travelled from London to Scotland by train despite knowingly having COVID in September 2020, but the circumstances that led to the byelection can hardly help her successor in the yellow rosette, Katy Loudon. More recently, of course, a <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/arrests-a-luxury-motorhome-and-a-power-couples-fall-the-inside-story-of-snp-police-probe-12877182">motorhome</a> rolled over SNP hopes of presenting themselves as an outsider or anti-establishment protest option.</p>
<p>On the tactical front, there remains a problem for Labour in this and many Scottish seats. The unionist vote is split while the SNP tends to monopolise the pro-independence vote. However, while Alex Salmond’s Alba Party is <a href="https://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2023/08/my-verdict-on-albas-decision-to-sit-out.html">standing aside</a>, the Scottish Greens are contesting the seat for the first time and, while this is hardly a Green hotspot (one of many points made in the <a href="https://ballotbox.scot/preview-rhw/">excellent Ballot Box Scotland preview</a> of this byelection), even a couple of percentage points off the SNP vote would make an unlikely victory even harder.</p>
<p>There is also plenty of scope for Labour, unambiguously the challenger here, to gain from a further tactical squeeze on the anti-independence side. Scottish Conservative voters have a recent record of swinging behind Labour and even the party’s politicians have <a href="https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23709145.tories-urge-people-rutherglen-not-vote-tactically-by-election/">wavered in their condemnation of the idea</a>.</p>
<p>All of this means that Labour is rightly the warm favourite and so, whatever the various parties’ spinners say following the result, a Labour gain would not signal much new. If Keir Starmer’s majority depends on winning a lot of Scottish seats, he will need to harvest higher-hanging fruit than Rutherglen (as the seat is to be renamed after the boundary changes). A thumping Labour win would hint at such gains, however.</p>
<p>In particular, it would signal that currently the key swing voters in Scotland – that is, those on the left torn between expressing their support for independence and kicking the Tories out – are giving a higher priority to the latter. This is a precondition for Labour progress in Scotland.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/214592/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rob Johns is part of the team conducting the Scottish Election Study, a project funded by the Economic & Social Research Council.</span></em></p>The SNP are set to lose a seat in a vote triggered by a COVID scandal. But this is not one of their safer seats at the best of times.Rob Johns, Professor of Politics, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2113812023-08-29T10:53:45Z2023-08-29T10:53:45ZDon’t look there: how politicians divert our attention from climate protesters’ claims<p>The right to protest is a distinctive feature of democratic, liberal societies. Yet the way in which many leading British politicians are currently talking about Just Stop Oil might make you think otherwise. Far from engaging with the issues at stake in these protests, politicians appear to be encouraging the wider public to ignore them or even oppose them. </p>
<p>Having seen their initial protests largely ignored, Just Stop Oil members have been making more disruptive (but non-violent) protests lately. They’ve been present at high-profile sports events like Wimbledon and the World Snooker Championships. </p>
<p>Policing minister Chris Philp dismissed the temporary delays caused to such events as “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/06/wimbledon-spectators-reasonably-intervene-just-stop-oil/">completely unacceptable</a>”. He argued that “the vast majority of the public are appalled by this very, very small, very selfish minority” and called on those not protesting to intervene.</p>
<p>With the UK government announcing new licences for oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, it’s clear that collective action that allows people to demonstrate their disagreement in peaceful ways is needed. In apparent contradiction to warnings about the climate crisis, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s commitment to the green agenda is wavering.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour party, has cancelled a plan to fund the transition from fossil fuels to green industries from the first day of government, should he win power. His response to criticism on this change was to turn on protesters. </p>
<p>He <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/just-stop-oil-north-sea-drilling-demands-contemptible-says-sir-keir-starmer-m3htrc052">said</a>: “The likes of Just Stop Oil want us to simply turn off the taps in the North Sea, creating the same chaos for working people that they do on our roads. It’s contemptible.”</p>
<h2>Diverting the conversation</h2>
<p>Referring to people defending the environment as a “minority” that acts against other citizens polarises society and marginalises protesters’ claims. It depicts people’s demands as somehow niche rather than amounting to a highly pressing threat to the majority.</p>
<p>One of the features of language is that when we talk, we only focus on one or, at most, a few aspects of a particular object or event. A lot will inevitably remain unsaid. </p>
<p>Still, when what remains unsaid is one of the most obvious elements of any given topic, what is missing becomes as informative as what was said. In this case, the focus on tactics instead of the substance of the protest betrays an unwillingness to engage with the climate crisis.</p>
<p>The government has put forward the home secretary Suella Braverman rather than the environment secretary to respond to the Just Stop Oil protests (itself a signal that they are seen as a public order issue more than anything else). </p>
<p>Braverman has referred to people protesting for environmental reasons as causing “<a href="https://dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12183767/SUELLA-BRAVERMAN-protesters-selfish-public-sick-them.html">havoc and misery</a>”. Environment secretary Thérèse Coffey, meanwhile, doesn’t appear to have made any public statements regarding the matter.</p>
<p>To say that people are protesting and not mentioning the reason for the protest leaves the story incomplete. That’s something that rarely happens when UK politicians talk about protests in other countries. </p>
<p>Last year, Sunak referred to women protesting in Iran as displaying “<a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/uk-news/2022/11/28/rishi-sunak-praises-iranian-women-and-footballers-in-foreign-policy-speech/">the most humbling and breathtaking courage</a>” in sending “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/12/20/rishi-sunak-increasingly-concerned-irans-behaviour-lists-foreign/">a very clear message that the Iranian people aren’t satisfied with the path that the government has taken</a>”. Here the focus of the conversation is placed on protesters’ claims. </p>
<p>But when talking about protests held in the UK, the debate looms over the disruption caused, as if the core message were secondary or even dispensable. It is only when the core message is ignored that politicians can refer to those acting in defence of human and nonhuman lives as “selfish”.</p>
<p>In the absence of meaningful political engagement, conversations about Just Stop Oil protests in the UK have strayed mainly into tactics and disruption at expense of their core message. However, politicians in democratic nations have a responsibility towards the electorate to engage properly with what citizens demand, not just with the way they make their claims heard. </p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Garcia-Jaramillo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>By focusing on the disruption caused by Just Stop Oil, politicians avoid having to talk about the substance of their argument.Daniel Garcia-Jaramillo, PhD researcher, Centre for Behavioural Science and Applied Psychology, Sheffield Hallam UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2107462023-08-01T14:53:38Z2023-08-01T14:53:38ZThe UK’s top financial influencers skew Conservative – which helps explain why Keir Starmer’s Labour is so anxious about uncosted spending pledges<p>It has become a common complaint among some Labour supporters that Keir Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves are being too cautious about their spending commitments in preparing for a future Labour government. At a recent national policy forum, the leadership clashed with the party’s left, which argued against “fiscal conservativism”. Starmer’s reply was that he doesn’t mind being <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-labour-government-spending-b2376121.html">described in these terms</a>.</p>
<p>At the forum, a majority of the participants were on his side in rejecting proposals for “unfunded” spending commitments <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/keir-starmer-defeats-left-wing-critics-to-win-backing-for-costed-election-plans_uk_64bd7207e4b0229eb5652557">made by the Unite union</a>. Unite’s position on spending was not shared by other trade unions, notably the GMB, which supported Starmer’s economic strategy.</p>
<p>There is a logic to the criticism levelled at Starmer. If the party does not separate itself from the Conservatives’ austerity policies, then it could falter in the election campaign next year. If potential Labour supporters are not enthused by an alternative vision for the future, they may not vote at all. </p>
<p>However, those opposed to Labour’s economic plans, would be well advised to listen to the comment made by James Carville, Bill Clinton’s chief political strategist. He <a href="https://policyexchange.org.uk/blogs/beware-the-bond-markets/">said</a>: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the Pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”</p>
<p>Carville recognised that any politician who loses the confidence of influential financial players soon finds themselves in trouble. For example, one need only look at the financial crash which occurred following former prime minister Liz Truss’s ill-advised budget proposals. </p>
<p>Financial markets reacted very badly to her unfunded proposals for tax cuts and this affected <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-09-26/uk-financial-markets-rebuke-liz-truss-and-her-mini-budget?leadSource=uverify%20wall">interest rates and the costs of mortgages</a>. The markets were powerful enough to trigger her resignation. </p>
<h2>Who are Britain’s financial players?</h2>
<p>For a potential Labour prime minister, there is even more to worry about, as can be seen using data from two sources. </p>
<p>The first is a detailed classification scheme of occupations originally created by the International Labour Organization – the <a href="https://www.ilo.org/public/english/bureau/stat/isco/">International Standard Classification of Occupations</a>. This includes more than 350 different occupations from “legislators and senior officials” to “doorkeepers and watchpersons”. </p>
<p>Among these are people who work as managers, traders and investment advisers in the finance industry. They are the financial decision-makers in Britain. They give advice on loans, mortgages and finances to the public. Those who work in banks make decisions about who can have a credit card and, as the recent row about Nigel Farage’s bank account shows, they even decide who can have a bank account.</p>
<p>The second source is the European Social Survey, a cross-national collaboration of researchers examining the political and social attitudes and behaviour of Europeans <a href="https://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/">over a period of more than 20 years</a>. Conveniently, it contains questions needed to identify occupations in the ILO scheme. </p>
<p>We can look at the voting records of individuals working as financial decision-makers in Britain. The country has participated in all ten survey rounds over the last 20 years. </p>
<p>So if we bundle these together there are close to 21,000 respondents and 254 of them are financial decision-makers. That makes it possible to chart their voting behaviour in comparison with people working in other occupational groups over the period of the surveys.</p>
<h2>How do financial players vote and why does it matter?</h2>
<p>Data from these two sources combined tell us that the people who influence the British financial sector skew more Conservative than the rest of the population. The chart below shows the voting behaviour of the 254 financial decision-makers over the whole period (in blue), compared with the rest of the population (in red). </p>
<p>It turns out that 41% of them voted Conservative compared with 32% of the rest of the population. Labour have a right to be nervous because only 32% of them voted Labour compared with 41% of the rest of the population. One is a mirror image of the other. </p>
<p><strong>Voting behaviour of financial decision-makers and others in Britain 2002 to 2020</strong></p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A chart showing that financial influencers vote Conservative more commonly than the rest of the population" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/540183/original/file-20230731-25-v810oj.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=514&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Percentage of financial decision makers who vote for each party compared to the percentage of the wider population who vote for each party.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">P Whiteley</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To be fair, these people are unlikely to make financial decisions based on their party preferences. They are much more likely to try to maximise returns for themselves and their clients, whatever the political context of the time. Their adverse reaction to Truss’s budget shows this to be true since if their Conservative leanings were what mattered they would not have reacted so badly to her economic plans. </p>
<p>That said, it probably means they are more likely to react even more badly to Labour making unfunded spending promises than the Conservatives, since their political leanings are likely to encourage them to be more wary of a Labour government than a Conservative government. </p>
<p>This helps explain Starmer’s caution about announcing spending plans ahead of the election. If he promises large-scale spending without showing where the money would come from to pay for it, then a Labour win in the next general election could cause a financial crash and a run on the pound. </p>
<p>The prudent strategy for Starmer is to repeat what Tony Blair promised to do before the 1997 election. He committed the Labour government to stick with Conservative <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1997/jan/21/economy.uk">spending plans for the initial years in power</a>. This neutralised concerns by the financial decision-makers about Labour winning power at that time.</p>
<p>Starmer’s critics have to recognise that it would be a serious blow to Labour’s chances if the party spooked the markets. If they started a new term in power with a financial crash it would derail Labour’s plans to change the current government’s economic strategy.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the prudent strategy produces a serious dilemma for the party. If promising pretty much the same as the Conservatives on spending, they risk not being able to encourage potential supporters to vote for them in the general election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Whiteley has received funding from the British Academy and the ESRC </span></em></p>The opposition is divided over whether it will win over voters by promising more public investment or by proving it is economically restrained.Paul Whiteley, Professor, Department of Government, University of EssexLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2099412023-07-25T11:54:57Z2023-07-25T11:54:57ZAcademic and vocational education divides students – radical change could make education more equal<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539007/original/file-20230724-15-2ysw3n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=8%2C0%2C5377%2C3625&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/group-diverse-teenage-students-learning-together-2214671831">Xavier Lorenzo/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Politicians across parties are proposing ways to promote vocational education in England. Rishi Sunak has pledged to limit “<a href="https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1680848107708338177">rip-off</a>” university courses and boost apprenticeships – diverting school students away from university and towards vocational education. </p>
<p>Labour leader Keir Starmer <a href="https://labour.org.uk/press/keir-starmer-unveils-labours-mission-to-break-down-barriers-to-opportunity-at-every-stage/">has spoken</a> of his desire to end “the snobbery that looks down on vocational education” through curriculum reform. These include a greater focus on digital skills and verbal fluency in the classroom. He also wants to ensure that children study a creative art or sport <a href="https://labour.org.uk/press/keir-starmer-unveils-labours-mission-to-break-down-barriers-to-opportunity-at-every-stage/">until age 16</a>.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, Andy Burnham, the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, has launched proposals for a <a href="https://greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk/media/7867/toward-1.pdf">Manchester baccalaureate</a>, currently at consultation stage. The Mbacc is intended to offer a clearer route from the age of 14 for students who want to follow a vocational pathway towards employment rather than university. </p>
<p>However, these proposed reforms may merely <a href="https://feweek.co.uk/why-manchesters-proposals-could-lead-straight-mbacc-to-square-one/">entrench the division</a> between academic and vocational education. A more radical proposal could see the two paths integrated throughout the school system – with all students picking from both academic and vocational subjects. </p>
<h2>Separate paths</h2>
<p>The divided system in English education has been in place since the 1944 Education Act. This established a tiered system of grammar schools for children judged more academically able, technical grammars that focused on vocational skills, and secondary moderns for the majority. Which school children went to was decided by a test taken at <a href="https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803105744134;jsessionid=B27F1B9C76770CC0A38907832404AF7D#:%7E:text=Quick%20Reference,a%20range%20of%20secondary%20schooling">age 11</a>. </p>
<p>In the early 1950s, only around 20% of children went to grammar schools. Most other children went to secondary moderns, since so few <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-98156-3_5">technical grammars were built</a>.
Selection at 11 was removed in most counties in England and Wales by the mid-1970s. But the idea of separate academic and vocational pathways has remained to this day in post-16 education, with separate qualifications available. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1659867559565328384"}"></div></p>
<p>Recent attempts to close the gap between academic and vocational qualifications have, arguably, been unsuccessful. T-levels were introduced to be a vocational and equal status <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/introduction-of-t-levels/introduction-of-t-levels">alternative to A-levels</a>, but have not been received as such. Not all <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/t-level-resources-for-universities/providers-that-have-confirmed-t-levels-suitable-for-entry-on-one-course">universities accept them</a> for entrance. This sends a clear message to young people that a vocational choice is seen as second best. </p>
<p>Learners are affected physically as well as emotionally by this hierarchy. Students are often separated into different institutions or study on the same site but in different buildings. School sixth forms largely <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-attainment-at-19-years">only offer A-levels</a>, so young people following a vocational pathway must go elsewhere, such as a further education college. </p>
<p>Changing public attitudes takes time. <a href="https://ijelt.dundee.ac.uk/articles/10.5334/ijelt.39">Research</a> by one of us (Elizabeth Gregory) with students suggests that their narratives around vocational qualifications are getting more positive. Almost all the study’s participants on a vocational pathway wanted to go on to university, and all spoke about the skills they were developing to secure the career of their choice. But parents and teachers – whose opinions were valuable to the students – still saw academic qualifications as the better option. </p>
<h2>Changing the system</h2>
<p>An important change would be to end the physical division that separates young people. This means students being taught alongside one another in the same institutions, regardless of pathway.</p>
<p>More support is needed for teachers if they are to provide even-handed advice to students and their families. Vocational pathways should be recommended because this is the best option for the student, rather than a second-best option for those not as good at exams. </p>
<p>Parity in entrance requirements is also needed. Universities have a duty to ensure applicants are suitable for their chosen course. However, excluding young people with appropriate vocational qualifications maintains the hierarchies that suggest some types of knowledge are more valuable than others. </p>
<p>A radical change, though, might work even better. </p>
<p>Twenty years ago, a <a href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20050301194752/http://www.dfes.gov.uk/14-19/documents/Final%20Report.pdf">review of 14-19 education</a>, commissioned by the government, recommended a structure that would let young people mix and match vocational and academic qualifications until they were 18 or 19. The idea was a common diploma for all, where a range of interests could be pursued without the need to choose between different – and differently valued – qualification types. </p>
<p>These radical suggestions were not implemented, but there have been more recent calls to revisit them, from both <a href="https://policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/betraying-a-generation">academics</a> and <a href="https://socedassoc.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/reimagining-education-sea.pdf">educational activists</a>. </p>
<p>Now that all young people have to stay in education or training <a href="https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2023/04/24/school-leaving-age-can-you-leave-school-at-16-and-what-are-your-options/">until they are 18</a>, a system like this could feasibly be put in place. </p>
<p>What’s more, <a href="https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3410">proposed changes</a> to higher education funding would see the introduction of a tuition-fee loan that could be <a href="https://educationhub.blog.gov.uk/2023/02/02/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-lifelong-learning-bill/">used flexibly</a> over a person’s working life. This could further reduce the need to make early education and career decisions, opening up routes to both vocational and academic qualifications later in life. </p>
<p>If politicians want to tackle inequalities in secondary education and create academic and vocational qualifications that promote equality rather than perpetuate hierarchies, more sweeping reforms may be needed than those currently on the table.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209941/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kathryn Telling is a member of the Socialist Educational Association's National Executive. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Elizabeth Gregory does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A hierarchy in perception puts academic qualifications above vocational ones.Elizabeth Gregory, Lecturer in Education, University of ManchesterKathryn Telling, Lecturer in Education, University of ManchesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2099022023-07-21T11:15:22Z2023-07-21T11:15:22ZByelection losses are terrible for the Conservatives – but there are glimmers of hope<p>It says much of the Conservatives’ current plight that a win of just 495 votes is being <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-66181315">hailed with relief</a> inside the party.</p>
<p>The Conservatives narrowly avoided a total wipeout in the July 20 trio of byelections, successfully defending Boris Johnson’s former seat in Uxbridge and South Ruislip with the election of Steve Tuckwell. The unpopularity of London Labour Mayor’s Sadiq Khan’s <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66264893">expansion of the ultra low emissions zone</a> (Ulez) undoubtedly contributed to the Conservative defence of Uxbridge.</p>
<p>But the party’s losses in Somerton and Frome in Somerset, and Selby and Ainsty in North Yorkshire, are notable. </p>
<p>So far in this parliamentary term, the Conservatives have had to defend nine seats. They have now held three. </p>
<p>The win in Uxbridge followed <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/dec/03/old-bexley-and-sidcup-byelection-louie-french-mp-tories-retain-seat">Old Bexley and Sidcup</a> in 2021, after the death of former cabinet minister James Brokenshire. The other was in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-60254176">Southend West</a> in 2022, a race uncontested by the other main parties following the murder of previous MP David Amess.</p>
<p>Of the six losses, four have been to the Liberal Democrats, on a staggering average 29% swing. The byelection in Somerton and Frome, after the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65941710">resignation</a> of Conservative MP David Warburton following allegations of misconduct, marked another win for the Liberal Democrats.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/boris-johnson-resignation-why-rishi-sunak-cant-afford-to-lose-more-than-one-of-three-impending-byelections-207588">Boris Johnson resignation: why Rishi Sunak can't afford to lose more than one of three impending byelections</a>
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<h2>Historic Labour win</h2>
<p>Selby and Ainsty was the Conservatives’ second byelection loss to Labour during this term, and it was significant.</p>
<p>The result was worse for the Conservatives than their previous loss to Keir Starmer’s party in <a href="https://theconversation.com/wakefield-and-tiverton-and-honiton-byelections-even-boris-johnson-loyalists-will-now-be-worried-for-the-next-election-185722">Wakefield</a>. That saw “only” a 12.6% swing to Labour, barely guaranteed to give the opposition an overall majority. </p>
<p>But Selby and Ainsty was one of the Conservatives’ safest northern seats, a 20,137 majority lost on a huge 23.7% swing. Voters seem to have been unimpressed by their MP, former Cabinet Office minister Nigel Adams, standing down when he did not receive a peerage. He’s now been replaced by Labour’s Keir Mather, who at 25 is the youngest member of parliament. </p>
<p>Turnout in Selby was down by 20,000. The Conservatives can hope that most of those 20,000 were their followers who will turn up on general election day, but it’s a leap of faith.</p>
<h2>Echoes from history</h2>
<p>This is all reminiscent of when the Conservatives last crashed out of office in 1997. During the 1992-97 <a href="https://www.parliament.uk/globalassets/documents/commons-information-office/m14.pdf">parliament</a>, the Conservatives lost all eight seats they defended in byelections: four to the Liberal Democrats, three to Labour and one to the SNP. </p>
<p>The average swing from the Conservatives to Labour and to the Liberal Democrats then was a whopping 23% – almost identical to the Selby and Ainsty swing – a clear portent of the looming and catastrophic Conservative defeat in 1997, their worst ever. </p>
<p>The Conservatives are now braced once again for the worst. Thirty-six MPs, including six former cabinet ministers, have announced they will be standing down at the next election, even though the contest is surely more than a year away. </p>
<p>For a while, some clung to the hope that Sunak and Starmer’s popularity ratings were close enough to give them a chance. No leader trailing on the question of “who do you think would make the best prime minister?” has won a general election since Margaret Thatcher in 1979. But Sunak now <a href="https://www.statista.com/statistics/710316/prime-minister-voting-intention-in-great-britain/">trails the Labour</a> leader by ten percentage points.</p>
<h2>What the future holds for the Conservatives</h2>
<p>The bad news is far from over for Sunak. It seems highly likely the eight-week <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66261825">suspension</a> from the Commons of Conservative MP Chris Pincher for allegedly groping two men will trigger a byelection in Tamworth this autumn. Under the Recall of MPs Act, only 10% of constituents need to sign a petition to generate the contest. And we saw what happened to the 20,000 Conservative majority in Selby. </p>
<p>An autumn byelection would be most unwelcome for a Conservative Party attempting a relaunch at its conference in Manchester in October. And at some point, Nadine Dorries will end the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jun/14/nadine-dorries-failure-to-resign-officially-as-mp-frustrates-sunaks-attempt-to-reset-tories">longest resignation in political history</a> and step down from her Mid-Bedfordshire seat. Cue another byelection. </p>
<p>Still, there are three glimmers of hope, however faint, for the current government.</p>
<p>One is that inflation is finally <a href="https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/will-inflation-in-the-uk-keep-rising">beginning to fall</a>, which may help reduce the current level of strikes. More working days were lost in the final quarter of last year than at any time since the 1980s. </p>
<p>Two is that the Conservatives have one final budget with which to put more money in people’s pockets. While tax cuts might be too blatant an electioneering ploy, we might expect a rise in tax thresholds.</p>
<p>Three is that the issue shaping the Uxbridge and South Ruislip result shows the problem Keir Starmer has in developing policies. The Labour leader’s only big new idea at last year’s party conference in Liverpool was a “new green economy” and he has been in retreat from it since. Everyone agrees with green policies until they are affected by them, and the reaction to Ulez in Uxbridge suggests elections may still trump the environment.</p>
<p>Sunak insists the result in Selby shows the general election is not a <a href="https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/defiant-rishi-sunak-says-uxbridge-general-election-not-done-deal/">“done deal”</a>. But the expectation remains overwhelmingly of a Labour government in autumn 2024. The debate is whether it will have an overall majority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209902/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jonathan Tonge does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More byelections could be on the way.Jonathan Tonge, Professor of Politics, University of LiverpoolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2059542023-07-12T09:45:00Z2023-07-12T09:45:00ZRacism and the Labour party: investigation after investigation feeds an endless factional loop<p>Before becoming leader of the Labour party in September 2015, Jeremy Corbyn will have anticipated a fractious experience ahead. Labour leaders have almost always presided over party divisions, many of which have spilled over into crisis. For Corbyn, who swept to victory on the back of overwhelming support of the party membership despite <a href="https://labourlist.org/2016/03/leaked-list-ranks-labour-mps-by-hostility-to-corbyn/">unprecedented hostility from his backbenches</a>, division was all the more likely.</p>
<p>Such expectations proved accurate, especially in relation to allegations of antisemitism that <a href="https://labourlist.org/2016/03/leaked-list-ranks-labour-mps-by-hostility-to-corbyn/">plagued Corbyn’s tenure as leader.</a> Corbyn’s critics lamented his reluctance to acknowledge the problem existed, his dithering response once he did, and propensity to <a href="https://labourlist.org/2018/07/why-wont-jeremy-corbyn-just-adopt-the-full-ihra-definition/">inflame the matter further</a>. Corbyn’s supporters, on the other hand, adhered to his view that the scale of the problem was <a href="https://labourlist.org/2020/10/corbyn-claims-labour-antisemitism-was-dramatically-overstated/#:%7E:text=Jeremy%2520Corbyn%2520has%2520claimed%2520in,the%2520problem%2520was%2520dramatically%2520overstated%25E2%2580%259D.">being exaggerated</a> for factional reasons. For them, any blame for the delays in dealing with antisemitism lay with the supposedly Blairite-controlled <a href="https://cryptome.org/2020/04/Labour-Antisemitism-Report.pdf">Governance and Legal Unit</a> (GLU).</p>
<p>Since succeeding Corbyn as leader, Keir Starmer has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/apr/07/jewish-leaders-praise-keir-starmer-for-pledges-on-labour-antisemitism">praised</a> for moving quickly to eradicate antisemitism. Starmer <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/corbyn-suspension-precedent/">removed the whip from Corbyn</a> for implying that accusations of antisemitism were factionally motivated, <a href="https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/corbyn-suspension-precedent/">sacked shadow minister Rebecca Long-Bailey</a> for sharing an article containing an antisemitic conspiracy theory, and implemented a new <a href="https://labourlist.org/2021/07/exclusive-how-labours-newly-proposed-internal-complaints-system-would-work/">independent complaints system</a> equipped to handle sensitive cases. However, Starmer’s detractors suggest he has used antisemitism as cover for a <a href="https://tribunemag.co.uk/2021/02/starmers-war-on-grassroots-politics">ruthless purge</a> of Corbynism and operates a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/02/labour-party-racism-allegations-prejudice-keir-starmer">“strange amnesty”</a> when dealing with allegations of other forms of prejudice, such as towards Muslims and people of colour.</p>
<p>This latter criticism has become harder to bat off given <a href="https://www.channel4.com/news/labour-mps-call-on-keir-starmer-for-urgent-action-on-racism?source=email-labour-list&link_id=3&can_id=2ded801666597810d8e119970774cba3&email_referrer=email_1923223&email_subject=forde-report-has-labour-done-enough">recent reports</a> that black Labour MPs are “losing faith” in the leadership’s commitment to dealing with anti-
black racism. Now Starmer is the one being accused of dithering over implementing the recommendations of an investigation that found “serious problems of discrimination” in the party. </p>
<h2>Inquiries in the Labour party</h2>
<p>Labour has, at this point, been subject to five investigations and inquiries concerning antisemitism and discrimination. The <a href="https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Chakrabarti-Inquiry-Report-30June16.pdf">Chakrabarti inquiry</a> was established by Corbyn following the suspension of Labour MP Naz Shah and former London Mayor Ken Livingstone for antisemitic comments. The <a href="https://antisemitism.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Royall-Report.pdf">Royall Report</a> was commissioned to investigate alleged antisemitism within Oxford University Labour Club. In 2019, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) launched an investigation into the party following <a href="https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/investigation-into-antisemitism-in-the-labour-party.pdf">numerous complaints</a> of antisemitism. Then, some Labour party staff compiled their own dossier documenting the <a href="https://cryptome.org/2020/04/Labour-Antisemitism-Report.pdf">work of the GLU in relation to antisemitism</a>. This has been intended as a submission to the EHRC investigation but was leaked in April 2020.</p>
<p>Finally, Labour’s National Executive Committee established the <a href="https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/The-Forde-Report.pdf">Forde inquiry</a> to investigate the contents of this leaked dossier. It is this report that opened up the conversation about concerns that attempts to deal with antisemitism were overshadowing discussions about other forms of racism. </p>
<p>Despite this recent explosion, internal party inquiries are a rare occurrence. The Labour party’s most recent significant internal inquiry was a 1986 investigation into <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13619462.2020.1712551">the influence of Militant Tendency in Liverpool</a>. Far more common are public inquiries, which are <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Public_Inquiries.html?id=2qo3UBq6rmYC&redir_esc=y">“part and parcel of public life”</a> and investigate matters of public concern. This begs the question, why has a tool typically used to deal with public matters outside of political parties featured so prominently in Labour’s antisemitism crisis?</p>
<h2>Why are inquiries used by political elites?</h2>
<p>Public inquiries are an essential part of <a href="https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/395692">crisis management</a>. Ostensibly, inquiries establish the facts, make recommendations and deliver accountability. However, they also occur during <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/abs/reflection-in-the-shadow-of-blame-when-do-politicians-appoint-commissions-of-inquiry/BC331E2B892D523563FE2EACDB29FA9A">high-stakes moments</a> and deal with matters which pose a serious threat to the political futures of those involved. In these moments of political survival, what political scientist Jim Bulpitt called “<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1467-856X.00054">crude, subsistence-level objectives</a>” take precedence over substantive attempts to address the issue at hand. In Bulpitt’s famous “statecraft interpretation”, self-interested political leaders must cultivate an image of competence to maintain power and at the same time manage competing factions in the party to fend off political rivals.</p>
<p>Hiving a scandal off to a purportedly apolitical body allows besieged political elites to achieve an image of competence by demonstrating an apparent commitment to accountability. An inquiry enjoys and aura of authority and at the same time closes the space for contestation by removing whatever issue is being investigated from the political arena.</p>
<p>This can also be true of internal inquiries. Just as national level scandals pose severe risks to national political leaders, internal party scandals pose severe risks to the political futures of party leaders and jeopardise their ability to achieve an aura of competence in the eyes of voters. In Labour’s case, this process comes with the added challenge of needing to manage the conflicting political traditions within its ranks.</p>
<p>These dynamics are crucial to understanding how both Corbyn and Starmer have responded to complaints of discrimination and accusations of failing to act on any number of recommendations for change. When political survival is on the line, leaders and their allies will continue to take a <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65032001">“factional view”</a>, even on the most divisive issues.</p>
<p>For Corbyn, allegations of antisemitism represented a threat to the pursuit of successful statecraft and was, as such, responded to in a strategic way. Starmer’s response to the scandal, meanwhile, aims to demonstrate his competence by illustrating a decisiveness that Corbyn lacked, and by demarcating himself from the Corbynite left.</p>
<h2>Corbyn, Starmer and the management of inquiries</h2>
<p>The toxic atmosphere that pervaded under Corbyn has been well documented. Dissenting MPs <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-36647458">passed a motion of no confidence</a> in their leader and party staff were <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1467-923X.12994">“ill-disposed and often uncooperative”</a> with Corbyn’s team and the wider left. Considering this context, it was explicable for Corbyn to deflect blame onto his internal opponents and downplay the extent of antisemitism to retain control of the party and reassure the public.</p>
<p>The Chakrabarti inquiry and the leaked dossier are part of this picture. The inquiry, led by a Corbyn ally, stressed that Labour was <a href="https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Chakrabarti-Inquiry-Report-30June16.pdf">“not overrun by antisemitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism”</a>. It did mention the <a href="https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Chakrabarti-Inquiry-Report-30June16.pdf">“occasionally toxic atmosphere”</a> within the party and recommended changes to procedures which predate Corbyn’s leadership.</p>
<p>The leaked dossier, meanwhile, offset blame for the delayed handling of antisemitism complaints to anti-Corbyn staff in the GLU, distancing the leader from responsibility. The inquiries were therefore used to preserve Corbyn’s authority, successfully manage internal party conflict, and present an image of competence regarding the handling of a sensitive issue.</p>
<p>Starmer’s emphasis on turning the page is also motivated by these subsistence-level objectives. Starmer has styled himself as a decisive leader and distanced himself from Corbyn, who is <a href="https://www.thejc.com/news/uk/one-third-of-voters-believe-labour-leader-jeremy-corbyn-is-antisemitic-new-yougov-poll-reveals-1.480126">seen as culpable for the antisemitism crisis</a> by large swathes of the public.</p>
<p>Starmer’s response to the EHRC report focused on <a href="https://labour.org.uk/press/keir-starmers-statement-in-response-to-ehrcs-report-into-anti-semitism/">“serious failings in leadership”</a>, the implication being not his leadership. Corbyn, in contrast, praised the report for highlighting that Labour’s handling of complaints had not been <a href="https://www.facebook.com/330250343871/posts/my-statement-following-the-publication-of-the-ehrc-reportantisemitism-is-absolut/10158939532253872/">“fit for purpose”</a> before he became leader and emphasised that reform during his tenure had been <a href="https://www.facebook.com/330250343871/posts/my-statement-following-the-publication-of-the-ehrc-reportantisemitism-is-absolut/10158939532253872/">“stalled by an obstructive party bureaucracy”</a>. </p>
<p>Starmer has also been quick to pounce on the EHRC’s announcement that it is no longer monitoring the Labour party, stressing that he has <a href="https://labour.org.uk/press/keir-starmer-responds-to-ehrc-announcement/#:%7E:text=On%2520the%2520day%2520that%2520the,and%2520humility%2520to%2520get%2520here.">“permanently, irrevocably, fundamentally”</a> moved Labour on from Corbyn’s inwards looking <a href="https://labour.org.uk/press/keir-starmer-responds-to-ehrc-announcement/#:%7E:text=On%2520the%2520day%2520that%2520the,and%2520humility%2520to%2520get%2520here.">“party of protest”</a>.</p>
<p>Thus, because of the highly politicised, factional context that Labour’s antisemitism scandal has erupted within, both Starmer and Corbyn carefully select which findings from the litany of inquiries to focus on in order to suit their own interests. Meanwhile, the substantive problems around antisemitism and other forms of racism do not get addressed.</p>
<h2>The Forde report</h2>
<p>The report from the inquiry led by barrister Martin Forde has been less comfortable terrain for Starmer. It was commissioned with an initial deadline of July 2020 but was repeatedly <a href="https://labourlist.org/2022/03/report-now-finalised-announces-forde-in-fresh-apology-to-labour-over-delays/#:%7E:text=LabourList%2520asked%2520the%2520Forde%2520Inquiry,to%2520prejudice%2520the%2520ICO's%2520work.">delayed</a> because of concerns it might prejudice a parallel investigation. Owing to the fact that the leaked report contained evidence of racist abuse targeted at black MPs by staff in the GLU, nine <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/12/forde-inquiry-delay-suggests-labour-not-serious-on-racism-black-mps-say">black Labour MPs</a> criticised the delays <a href="https://labourlist.org/2021/02/black-labour-mps-seriously-concerned-with-forde-inquiry-indefinite-delay/">for further</a> “doubling down on the impression that the party does not take anti-black racism seriously”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Protestors hold up signs criticising Labour leader Keir Starmer" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527101/original/file-20230518-5871-9fgazt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/527101/original/file-20230518-5871-9fgazt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527101/original/file-20230518-5871-9fgazt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527101/original/file-20230518-5871-9fgazt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=354&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527101/original/file-20230518-5871-9fgazt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527101/original/file-20230518-5871-9fgazt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/527101/original/file-20230518-5871-9fgazt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Corbyn supporters protest Starmer’s failure to publish the Forde report.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alamy</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When the <a href="https://labour.org.uk/fordereport/">report was finally published</a> in July 2022, it provided evidence of discriminatory views against people of colour by senior party staff, and found that the importance attached to antisemitism cases “in the interfactional conflict meant that the party was in effect operating a hierarchy of racism or of discrimination with other forms of racism and discrimination being ignored”. A litany of evidence was provided to show that factionalism worked both ways, leading the report to conclude:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the whole situation rapidly deteriorated as several on the Right did seize on the issue as a way to attack Corbyn and several on the Left adopted a position of denialism and conspiracy theories.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Starmer again framed these findings as relating to a time before he came to office, arguing that the <a href="https://labour.org.uk/fordereport/">“focus of the report was 2014–19</a> and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/bbcmerseyside/videos/claire-hamilton-talks-to-labour-leader-sir-keir-starmer/525329726056091/">deflecting questions onto Corbyn</a>.</p>
<p>Martin Forde has since <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/17/labour-accused-still-not-engaging-hierarchy-racism-claims">voiced concerns that Starmer</a> and his staff have effectively ignored the report’s recommendations. He warned it is not <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/17/labour-accused-still-not-engaging-hierarchy-racism-claims">"a sufficient response to say that was then, this is now”</a>. In response, the party retorted that Starmer has implemented many of Forde’s recommendations and led the drive to rid <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/17/labour-accused-still-not-engaging-hierarchy-racism-claims">“the party of the destructive factionalism … that did so much damage previously”</a>.</p>
<p>Political elites will always manage crises with their political legitimacy and survival in mind. The establishment of investigations and inquiries, and official responses to them, are therefore intertwined with the political interests of the actors involved. Acknowledging this sheds light on Corbyn and Starmer’s response to the antisemitism crisis and accusations of racism. It explains why both issues remain entangled in factionalism. The uncomfortable conclusion, then, is that even issues of racism and discrimination will be dealt with in ways that maximise the political advantage of political elites, no matter how sincere their motivations may be.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205954/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bradley Ward is a Labour party member.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nathan Critch is a Labour party member.</span></em></p>Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer have both faced inquiries and reports – one for antisemitism and one for racism in the Labour party.Bradley Ward, Teaching Fellow, Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of BirminghamNathan Critch, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2080732023-06-21T13:00:59Z2023-06-21T13:00:59ZWhy Labour is right to stop future UK oil and gas development<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533135/original/file-20230621-16-2ik3f9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=261%2C629%2C4596%2C2396&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Discarded oil rigs in the Cromarty Firth, Scotland.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/cromarty-firth-scotland-oil-rigs-discarded-2021470739">Wayleebird/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Labour Party has <a href="https://labour.org.uk/press/keir-starmer-speech-unveiling-labours-mission-to-cut-bills-create-jobs-and-provide-energy-security-for-britain/">announced</a> that it intends to stop the development of any new oil and gas fields in UK territory if it forms the next government. </p>
<p>The move will have far-reaching consequences, leading to a rapid contraction of the UK’s oil and gas industry over the next decade. So it’s no surprise that much of the reaction from newspapers, businesses and trade unions has been very negative. The current prime minister, Rishi Sunak, has gone so far as to <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65839733">call Labour’s proposed policy</a> “bizarre” and the product of “eco-zealots”.</p>
<p>But Labour is currently well ahead in the polls, and with an election due by early 2025, there’s a real possibility that banning further fossil fuel development could become official UK government policy within the next two years. </p>
<p>So, it’s important to know if Sunak is right. Is Labour’s vow to halt new oil and gas fields ill-advised and even “bizarre”?</p>
<p>In fact, according to my calculations, burning all the UK’s existing oil and gas reserves will already produce more than the UK’s fair share of greenhouse gas emissions under the <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-things-you-need-to-know-about-the-paris-climate-deal-52256">2015 Paris Climate Agreement</a> – so suggesting we look for more seems bizarre to me. </p>
<p>It only makes sense if the people making such decisions have no intention of sticking to the UK’s international obligations to tackle climate change.</p>
<h2>Limiting temperature rise</h2>
<p>Under the <a href="https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement">Paris Agreement</a>, nearly every country in the world is legally obliged to prevent dangerous climate change. Signatories are committed to pursuing efforts to limit global heating to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.</p>
<p><a href="https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/15/2295/2023/">Recent estimates</a> suggest that in order to meet this target, we must emit no more than the equivalent of 250 billion tonnes (250 gigatonnes) of CO₂ globally. To put this in context, we’ve <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions">already emitted 1,500 gigatonnes</a> of CO₂ since the industrial revolution, meaning about 86% of all the emissions we can get away with have already been released into the atmosphere.</p>
<p>The consequences of exceeding 1.5°C of global warming will be severe. Temperatures have already risen 1.2°C above pre-industrial times, and at this level of heating, <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-cycle/">we are seeing</a> increasingly frequent and intense heat, precipitation, droughts, hurricanes and glacier loss. So, even 1.5°C of global warming <a href="https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000234">may be too much</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A glacier calving large chunks of ice." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533137/original/file-20230621-30-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533137/original/file-20230621-30-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533137/original/file-20230621-30-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533137/original/file-20230621-30-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533137/original/file-20230621-30-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533137/original/file-20230621-30-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533137/original/file-20230621-30-7lslyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Neko Harbour glacier calving at Andvord Bay, West Antarctica.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/neko-harbor-glacier-calving-andvord-bay-1556725400">Steve Allen/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Emissions from existing reserves</h2>
<p>If the global budget of emissions for keeping temperature rise below 1.5°C is shared equally across the world’s population, then the UK should contribute no more than 2.5 gigatonnes. Yet <a href="https://climate-change.data.gov.uk/articles/emissions-embedded-in-trade-and-impacts-on-climate-change">43% of our emissions are “embedded”</a>, meaning they are produced when the goods we buy are manufactured abroad. Our domestic emissions should therefore be no more than the remaining 57% – that’s just 1.4 gigatonnes.</p>
<p>How does this stack up against the future emissions from the UK’s oil and gas reserves?</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nstauthority.co.uk/media/8394/reserves-and-resources-2022.pdf">UK government’s own estimate</a> of reserves (oil and gas remaining in existing fields and likely developments of them) is around 4 billion barrels. A barrel is the oil industry’s rather odd way to measure volume (it equates to about 160 litres). Setting fire to a barrel of oil releases roughly <a href="https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-calculator-calculations-and-references#:%7E:text=The%20average%20carbon%20dioxide%20coefficient,gallon%20barrel%20(EPA%202022).">430 kg of CO₂</a> into the atmosphere. </p>
<p>Taking this figure into account, 1.7 gigatonnes of CO₂ would be released into the atmosphere if all of the UK’s reserves were extracted and burned. That’s 300,000 tonnes more than the UK’s remaining emissions budget.</p>
<h2>Stop fossil fuel exploration</h2>
<p>The message is clear: in the UK, we cannot safely burn all of the oil and gas reserves we already have. So, it make no sense to invest money and jeopardise our collective futures by developing new fields.</p>
<p>Doing so will result in two unfavourable scenarios. Either we will be left with hydrocarbons that we cannot sell as the world transitions to alternative energy sources, or we will burn it anyway and disregard the climate consequences. </p>
<p>That’s why, in my opinion, it’s “bizarre” to develop new fields. And I’m someone who has spent 40 years working in or with the hydrocarbon exploration industry. Simple arithmetic tells us we have to stop, but it’s arithmetic that many of our political leaders have yet to grasp.</p>
<p>The same is true on a global scale. The world’s oil reserves are still going up because, every year, we find more oil than we use. </p>
<p>The latest estimate of global reserves stands at <a href="https://www.ogj.com/exploration-development/reserves/article/14286688/global-oil-and-gas-reserves-increase-in-2022">1,757 billion barrels</a>. Following the same calculations as before, these reserves would generate the equivalent of 760 gigatonnes of CO₂ when burned. That’s three times the world’s safe emissions limit. </p>
<p>If released, these CO₂ emissions would take global temperatures over 2°C above the pre-industrial level – a clear breach of the Paris agreement.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Oil truck tankers at an oil refinery." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533148/original/file-20230621-24-971h6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/533148/original/file-20230621-24-971h6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533148/original/file-20230621-24-971h6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533148/original/file-20230621-24-971h6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533148/original/file-20230621-24-971h6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533148/original/file-20230621-24-971h6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/533148/original/file-20230621-24-971h6x.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The world’s oil reserves are still going up.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/oil-truck-tankers-refinery-background-evening-442808020">Huang Yi Fei/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I’m not the first person to point this out. In fact, the International Energy Agency (a multi-government organisation set up in 1974 to promote the security of oil supplies) <a href="https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/7ebafc81-74ed-412b-9c60-5cc32c8396e4/NetZeroby2050-ARoadmapfortheGlobalEnergySector-SummaryforPolicyMakers_CORR.pdf">stated last year</a> that “there is no need for investment in new fossil fuel supply in our net zero pathway”. </p>
<p>If the International Energy Agency says we should stop developing new fields, then perhaps we should listen. <a href="https://beyondoilandgasalliance.org/who-we-are/">Several nations</a>, including Denmark, Ireland, France and Costa Rica, paid attention and have announced they will discourage continued investment in increasing the production of oil and natural gas. It’s time the UK joined them. </p>
<hr>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Imagine weekly climate newsletter" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/434988/original/file-20211201-21-13avx6y.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Waltham receives funding from Shell. He is affiliated with the Citizens' Climate Lobby. He is also Director of the Centre for Energy and Resources at Royal Holloway, University of London.</span></em></p>Keir Starmer pledges to end new UK oil and gas exploration – an expert’s take on why this is the right move.David Waltham, Professor of Geophysics, Royal Holloway University of LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.