Status: 09/27/2022 8:44 p.m
The British Conservatives are not coming out of the criticism – and the Labor Party is benefiting. It’s more popular than it’s been in decades. Party leader Starmer promises to anchor Labor more firmly in the center again.
Things couldn’t have gone any better for Labor. Labor is holding its party conference just as the Conservative government has sent the British pound plummeting with its debt-financed promises of tax cuts.
The distrust that the foreign exchange markets have in British economic and financial policy is a throw down for the Social Democrats, especially since it is primarily the top earners who will benefit from the tax cuts.
The party is in better shape than it has been in decades
In a YouGov poll for The Times newspaper, Labor is currently 17 percentage points ahead of the Conservatives, not since Tony Blair’s time two decades ago. Labor leader Keir Starmer stepped up to the lectern in Liverpool with corresponding self-confidence.
What we have seen in the past few days is without precedent. The government has lost control of the British economy. She crushed the pound. Higher interest rates, higher inflation, higher debt. And for what? Not for you, not for working people, but for tax cuts for those who make up the richest one percent of our society. Don’t forget that, don’t forgive that! The only way to stop this is with a Labor government.
After their dramatic electoral defeat in the general election three years ago, Labor members are now celebrating. The mood at the party conference in Liverpool is: “We’re back!”.
Jerk back to center
Starmer wants to anchor the party, which his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn had moved extremely far to the left, back more firmly in the center – and thus where elections are usually won. Last but not least, Starmer made this clear with a concrete formulation: He described Labor as the political arm of the British population.
This formulation is more than a promise to stand by the little people. It’s a formulation that the then Labor leader Tony Blair used in 1996 before he became British Prime Minister a little later. The sentence is also significant because it can be interpreted as distancing yourself from the unions, since Labor has traditionally seen itself as the political arm of the unions.
Starmer took his time spelling out how much, in his view, Conservative governments have neglected the working class over the past 12 years. He promised more justice and more equal opportunities in the country and also announced that more than a million new jobs would be created through a green economic policy. In this context, Labor plans, in the event of an election victory, to set up “Great British Energy”, a company for renewable energy, which will be in public hands.
Labor on the up – Party speech by Keir Starmer
Imke Koehler, ARD London, September 27, 2022 8:11 p.m