Labor on the rise (nd-aktuell.de)

Will Keir Starmer become the new Tony Blair? As it was in the mid-1990s, the Labor Party in Britain is on the rise, trailing the Tories by a mere 17 percentage points in polls. Meanwhile, the Tory party is looking increasingly unhappy. Prime Minister Liz Truss is battling growing internal opposition and her economic policies are upsetting financial markets. As Brexit-Britain limps from one crisis to the next, Labor is presenting itself with growing confidence as the future party of government, albeit the next election is unlikely until 2024.

Keir Starmer took the lectern at the Liverpool Conference Center where the party is holding its annual conference on Tuesday afternoon to thunderous applause. The party leader presented a list of plans to get the country back on track: massive investment in green energy, more support for the struggling NHS health service, extra help for people who want to own their homes, higher wages for everyone. But he also warned against exaggerated expectations by committing to fiscal responsibility: Some plans would not be implemented as quickly as desired. “We will only borrow for investments when it is in the country’s long-term interest,” Starmer said.

He continued a political strategy that he has been pursuing since taking office in spring 2020: to act as a moderate Labor leader and to distance himself from his left-wing predecessor Jeremy Corbyn as much as possible. Another symbol of this trip to the political center was that the delegates at the party conference sang the national anthem “God Save the King” – for the first time ever. “We are a center party,” Starmer said in his speech. The Labor Party is now the “political wing of the British people” – a slogan he copied directly from Tony Blair. Other leading party members also refer to the former boss, who was prime minister from 1997 to 2007 and won three elections. Labor ‘comes back to finish the job,’ said Shadow Secretary Lisa Nandy.

However, a look at the party program shows that the legacy of the Corbyn years lives on. Labor, for example, has pledged to renationalize the privatized rail system and set up a sovereign wealth fund for new industrial projects. The party drew up both proposals in a similar form under Corbyn, and they are very well received by the public. Starmer also promised on Tuesday to set up a state energy company – much to the enthusiasm of the delegates.

The fact that Labor is currently popular with voters is also due to the fact that the Tories have maneuvered themselves into a deep crisis. The economic policy strategy that Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng presented last Friday has caused economists to shake their heads and the public to be outraged. In principle, his growth plan is limited to tax cuts for big earners and corporations.

Of particular concern to the Tories is that Kwarteng’s budget plan has failed to boost confidence in the UK economy at all: instead, his announcement has thrown international financial markets into major turmoil, with the pound falling to its lowest value against the dollar since the 1980s.

It’s hard to exaggerate “how badly Kwarteng’s announcement was received by the financial markets,” writes the “Financial Times.” Great Britain, known for years as the “sick man of Europe”, suddenly seems to have ended up in intensive care.

It is also obvious that Truss and Kwarteng, with their neo-liberal policies, are completely bypassing the British government. The announced tax cut for high earners is rejected by 72 percent of the public, including a whopping 69 percent of Tory voters. The economic strategy presented on Friday “looks increasingly like a serious, unforced error,” writes British financial journalist Robert Peston.

In this way, the opposition can suddenly present itself as a party that is more responsible in terms of economic policy – ​​this has always been the weakness of the Labor Party up to now. At the end of his speech on Tuesday, Starmer reiterated: “This is a Labor moment” – just as it was in 1997. “We make it.”