# New UK Labour Party (main left wing party) leader -- Keir Starmer



## FAST6191 (Apr 6, 2020)

Several days behind the curve but an interesting story, more than a lot of what else we see and would usually see some discussion so might as well go it.
Seems Keir Starmer won the labour leadership contest. Did so in the first round of voting as well, getting more than 50% while he was at it, though do note leaderships elections work differently in labour than they do in the conservatives that we saw a leadership election for last year after Theresa May got booted out.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-52164589
Only been an MP since 2015 ( https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25353/keir_starmer/holborn_and_st_pancras/votes ), much like many politicians seems he was a lawyer before then (QC, a very hard to do feat, at that since 2002 -- https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/UsefulNotes/BritishCourts ) but more on the human rights law prior to taking the silk (I shall be curious to see his take on free speech myself, especially as one of his more famous cases involved him defending it, and modern labour seems to oppose it).
If you want a breakdown of how UK politics works then https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLfxy4_sBQdxzZNqvVQXcBPvsl1Zgzy2-q does a pretty good job, though might want to start at the 8th of that playlist and then go from 1. Short version is while officially having no more power than any other MP without an office/role then unofficially the leader of the opposition is someone people pay attention to, is the face of their party (leader as well but that can get complicated, especially if we have to consider all of the parties and their various approaches), and will be seen in parliament going toe to toe with the prime minister.

To set the scene the UK fairly recently saw a snap general election. In it the labour party, and if we are to go for some kind of left-right political categorisation then the main left wing party in England and still most of the other parts of the UK for decades now, was fairly convincingly thrashed at the polls. When such a thing happens the leader of the party tends to be ousted before too long (timeline here is middling).
A variety of factors might be said to contribute to this --
The so called red (red being Labour's colour) wall, a portion of the north of England (traditionally quite a bit poorer, more industrial though that means increasingly little and the loss of industry tends to contribute to the poorer thing, and in something of an odd twist quite traditional in a lot of ways -- the diversity drum does not beat half as loudly there as it does in London) that had reliably voted for them for decades, if not fell then got several holes in it.
Scotland over the last few decades has seen the SNP rise from joke party to sort of leader of Scotland and as they hold many of the same policies (indeed change the colours, make the obvious word replacements and remove the Scottish independence stuff and many would mistake it for a labour one) a lot of that came from what was once strong support there. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1057795/scottish-election-results/
Many would have also said their policies in the last election were not ones many could get behind either through general dislike ( https://web.archive.org/web/20191206182443/https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/ ), their position on the UK leaving the EU (they switched on their earlier decades policy to be in favour of the EU and while they attempted some measure of neutrality they were generally seen as opposing leaving it, which in turn put them in opposition to about half the country, including many in said red wall regions) or citing economic infeasibility of them (never mind all at once).

If you look out in the wider world then some consider that a part of a trend towards either more right wing candidates or the left wing making themselves rather more unelectable by various means. You can do various analysis type things on policies and see the various spreads (for the US but applies most places I follow and that use similar governmental systems https://www.people-press.org/2014/06/12/section-1-growing-ideological-consistency/ , which is to say most of Europe and their former empires), willingness (or indeed lack of) to contain the more extreme elements*.

*while there have been notable failures the right wing parties of today seem to be able to at least leave the crazier elements of their parties to run against the wall of a padded cell or play among themselves. The left wing on the other hand have allowed several not only to run rampant but dictate policy and hold fairly high office (see Diane Abbot's, now former Shadow Home Secretary, more interesting rants and a whole bunch of others, or indeed if we want to do US politics "the squad" might be a start there). At the same time the really left wing seems to realise at some level that they are not an electable force in and of themselves (the squad stuff there mainly getting in via a method called primarying, wherein they get selected early on when nobody really votes and then get carried into office as you pretty much only have two choices in the final vote that more participate in) so form an uneasy alliance.
There are various things that might drawn from that; if you look at the split and assign weighting for issues most people within the scope are concerned with then the left has a massive range to try to keep happy -- everything from the "real communism has never been implemented" to "oppression Olympics is not only real, valid and ongoing but extremely important" to "let's just not fuck over the working man". Part of the reason I hesitated with the left-right thing is for most of the UK nobody cares about abortion, religion died decades ago, states rights is a weird thing indeed that would take hours to unpack, guns went decades ago, everybody likes government healthcare to various degrees and... it is really quite hard for someone with a typical view of the US right (never mind their changes over the decades, which while not as radical as those of the left have happened) to compare it to. This is also saying nothing of things like https://hiddentribes.us/profiles/ , though again that is a US study and I don't have much for outside it at this point but I doubt many will not see parallels where they are at (for the UK one then some of the comments people got from said former red wall areas saying much there).

Almost in counter to that then Keir Starmer is being billed as a more centrist candidate (his voting record generally going there https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/25353/keir_starmer/holborn_and_st_pancras/votes ), with several of his opponents definitely being rather far on the left as it were. What this means in practice we don't know, and most things are concerned either with his appointments ( https://www.theguardian.com/politic...s-keir-starmer-fills-top-shadow-cabinet-roles ) or his position on this virus lark (the options being he can act as opposition, consider it an emergency so focus on getting things done, or maybe some kind of middle ground where failings are called out and policies debated but staunch opposition left for other times). Next general election is not until May 2024 (I doubt we will see another snap election given how many have happened in recent times and the fixed term parliament thing) so we have years of new dramas to get through before then, next local ones have been delayed to next year because of kung flu, no more European elections for obvious reasons, and by elections can come at any time but rarely more than one or two a year and generally meaningless to the greater narrative.


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## emigre (Apr 6, 2020)

Am a Labour member. Though I wouldn't say Keir is my ideological choice, I did vote for him as Labour Leader.

Some members on the right and left have lost their shit since he won, the right is going on about a purge on the left, the left on about him being a blarite etc.

His shadow cabinet is interesting, it does seem slanted towards the centre-left which wasn't something I thought was possible back in 2015. With the exception of Rachel Reeves, there wasn't anyone terribly offensive to either side of the party. I was glad to see Ed Milliband return to the front bench, he leadership of the party was very compromised but he's a smart guy who has a lot to offer.

Personally I'm just hoping we can get over the toxicity of the last few years, I sit on the left on the party, so got really frustrated and put off. Keir's not instinctively my cup of tea as his campaign really didn't say anything much about him. He won and deserves every Labour MP and member to give him a chance. I do think Corbyn was doomed from day one when it was clear the PLP wouldn't play ball from day one. Keir shouldn't have this problem but if the PLP act like shits again, I'll consider my membership.


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## ChibiMofo (Apr 6, 2020)

At least labour has a leader. RIP, Boris. You shouldn't have brazenly shook everyone's hand a coronavirus hospital and then joked about it. Stupid is as stupid does. And 43.6% of the British voters were dumb enough to saddle themselves with this loser and his party of brexiteers for the next 5 years. History will not be kind, though that is the least of their worries.


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## Flame (Apr 6, 2020)

emigre said:


> Am a Labour member. Though I wouldn't say Keir is my ideological choice, I did vote for him as Labour Leader.
> 
> Some members on the right and left have lost their shit since he won, the right is going on about a purge on the left, the left on about him being a blarite etc.
> 
> ...



my thoughts are the same. i too am a Labour member. the way Corbyn was treated is an absolute disgrace.


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