The unfortunate question Sir Keir Starmer must confront as he prepares for a crucial party conference

Published

4 years ago

September 24, 2021

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Will Britain elect a prime minister people see as weak? This unfortunate question is one Sir Keir Starmer must confront on the eve of his first in-person party conference as Labour leader, however personally painful he finds it.

Can he reverse voters’ first impressions of him by taking on his party in Brighton then imprinting on the nation a vision of a better more prosperous Britain under Labour this week?

Or can other qualities of the Labour leader and his party ensure he is still electable?

What seems in little doubt is that is what the public currently think.

Exclusive polling for Sky News by Opinium makes stark reading.

By a two to one margin the public believe Sir Keir is a weak leader, according to polling conducted on Monday to Wednesday of this week, with 47% saying he is weak and 21% saying he is strong. The rest do not know.

Perhaps even more extraordinarily, the poll suggests existing Labour voters are evenly split over Sir Keir’s strength – 39% think he is strong but 37% think weak.

Pollsters believe that being seen as “weak” by the public ultimately scuppered Theresa May and Gordon Brown, so Sir Keir would be unwise to ignore the finding. But who he should fight, and how, remain big unknowns.

Many Labour MPs are crying out for Sir Keir to show spark and verve when he addresses the faithful on Wednesday.

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After all, he is up against Boris Johnson, who revels in rejecting the qualities Sir Keir espouses, and appears to profit politically from doing so.

The PM is currently successfully dealing with a competent, safe, managerial and cautious opponent with his wild proclamations, fights with the French in Franglais, a speak-first-check-later approach to the facts, a disdain for the law, conventions, courts, judges and elite opinion and an enthusiasm to be on TV bizarrely unmatched by anyone in the Labour Party.

That these qualities prove a vote winner for Mr Johnson have surprised many in Labour and Sir Keir may just be wondering whether anyone will “donnez moi un break”, but this is the reality Labour must deal with.

The Opinium poll also suggests the wider public want inspiration. 39% of voters say he is boring, while just 18% call Sir Keir interesting.

Labour voters are more likely to see him as boring, with 32% who currently vote for his party saying so, against 31% who say he is interesting.

“The public had a good first impression of Starmer, with more saying they had a positive view of him than any opposition leader since Tony Blair last summer,” explains pollster Chris Curtis from Opinium.

“But over the last 12-14 months his popularity has dropped substantially. While voters still see him as someone who is competent and cares about people’s concerns, he is not currently viewed as strong enough to be Britain’s prime minister.”

Sir Keir has a clear two-pronged plan to upend his reputation this week in Brighton, and the leader’s allies talk of him wanting to “turn the page”.

The first prong is to change some internal party rules on the Saturday and Sunday, the second is to flesh out his vision for the country between Monday and Wednesday, culminating in the speech he will make to conclude the conference.

But the rule changes have already run into trouble, and it is not clear whether Sir Keir will have the strength to push them through in the next 36 hours.

His flagship move is to scrap the way future Labour leaders are chosen, abandoning the One Member One Vote system introduced by Ed Miliband which elected Jeremy Corbyn and Sir Keir, and return to the electoral college system used previously.

Neither would have stopped Mr Corbyn’s 2015 election, yet the initiative appears designed to pick a deliberate fight with the Corbyn-supporting left.

It is not entirely clear why, however, there appears to have been a cooler than expected reaction from the unions like Unite, with it unclear whether more pro-Starmer unions like GMB will win the day.

The biggest issue, however, as the row sucks energy and oxygen out of the start of conference, is what it reveals about Sir Keir’s priorities.

Why change the rules governing the selection of his successor at all?

The Labour leadership have done a poor job explaining why this is necessary, with Sir Keir largely avoiding the media this week and Shabana Mahmood, the party’s campaign coordinator, telling me only that it was part of a “wider package of measures” but declining to go into detail why this specific change is so important.

Into this vacuum, the left is coming up with excitable conspiracy theories whether or not some around Sir Keir might try to engineer a vacancy – highly unlikely but nevertheless unhelpful speculation.

Then there is the question of whether Sir Keir can manage to speak to the country, through senior members of his frontbench team on Monday and Tuesday and his own speech on Wednesday.

The first draft of his vision came out on Wednesday night in the 11,500 word Fabian pamphlet about his vision of a contributory society.

Based on reflections from his travel around the country this summer, it suggests he sees a need for more workers’ rights, tougher laws to tackle violence against women and a strong hint that Labour would reintroduce a class size cap.

Presented as a document designed to burnish Sir Keir’s centre ground credentials, it stresses the need for partnership with the private sector and even nods to the legitimate causes of Brexit.

But this needs to be translated into a vision that captivates.

Although hard, it can be done like David Cameron’s speech as Leader of the Opposition in 2006 or Ed Miliband’s Predators v Producers speech of 2011, who were both leaders on the back foot at the time their speeches turned their fortunes around.

The scale of Sir Keir’s challenge can be seen in the hardest to measure metric of all: the silence of people who should be allies.

The Labour leader’s office committed an act of self harm this week, in the face of the energy crisis and run-up to Labour conference, not even able to field frontbench supporters to go on TV and radio to cheer for Sir Keir and his rule changes and attack the government.

Instead it was left to Gordon Brown and John McDonnell to fill the airwaves.

Asked by Kay Burley on Sky News why the absence, Party chairwoman Anneliese Dodds suggested: “I’m sure it was more to do with some kind of logistical issues rather than anything more serious than that.”

Asked in private this week what they make of the operation and preparations for the conference, many have said they don’t disagree but the handling of the last few days felt so chaotic they want to avoid intervening.

“I’m not sure what he’s passionate about,” says one Labour MP who should on paper be one of Sir Keir’s strongest allies.

“I think the rule change is the right thing to do I’m just not going out to bat for it when they’ve cocked up the execution so badly.”

MPs like the former party chairman Ian Lavery are now openly giving odds on Sir Keir being gone by Christmas, giving a one in five chance of this outcome.

If he wants to persuade voters he is indeed a strong leader, Sir Keir needs his allies cheering him on and making that case.

Politics

Budget 2025: Hospitality pleads for ‘lifeline’ as Rachel Reeves accused of imposing ‘stealth tax’

Published

6 hours ago

November 29, 2025

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Budget 2025: Hospitality pleads for 'lifeline' as Rachel Reeves accused of imposing 'stealth tax'

Rachel Reeves has been accused of failing to “support the great British pub” as she promised in the budget, with owners facing skyrocketing business rates bills.

In her speech in the House of Commons on Wednesday, the chancellor said she was backing small businesses by introducing “permanently lower tax rates for over 750,000 retail, hospitality and leisure properties – the lowest tax rates since 1991”.

But while the government gave itself the powers to discount the business rates bills for high street businesses through legislation earlier this year, the chancellor only implemented a reduction of a quarter of what the government is able to, and she is being accused of imposing a “stealth tax”.

It has left small retail, hospitality, and leisure businesses questioning whether their businesses will be viable beyond April next year.

A Treasury spokesperson said: “We’re protecting pubs, restaurants and cafes with the budget’s £4.3bn support package – capping bill rises so a typical independent pub will pay around £4,800 less next year than they otherwise would have.

“This comes on top of cutting licensing costs to help more venues offer pavement drinks and al fresco dining, maintaining our cut to alcohol duty on draught pints, and capping corporation tax.”

Business rates, which are a tax on commercial properties in England and Wales, are calculated through a complex formula of the value of the property, assessed by a government agency every three years, combined with a national “multiplier” set by the Treasury, giving a final cash amount.

Over the last few years, small businesses were given business rates relief of 75% to support them over the COVID pandemic, and Ms Reeves reduced that to 40% at last year’s budget.

The idea was that at the budget this year, the chancellor would remove that remaining relief in favour of reforming the business rates system to compensate for that drop, while shifting the tax burden on to much bigger businesses and companies like Amazon with lots of warehouse space.

However, the chancellor only announced a 5p in the pound discount for small retail, hospitality, and leisure businesses, rather than the assumed 20p drop which the government gave itself the powers to implement, and which trade bodies had been lobbying for.

On top of that, small businesses have seen the government-assessed value of their property increase dramatically, which wipes out the discount, and sees their business rates bill shoot far above what they had previously been paying.

One pub owner near Hull, Sam Caroll, has seen the assessed value of one of his two properties increase from £67,000 to £110,000 in just three years – a 64% increase.

He told Sky News that there is a “continual question” of business viability, and while he thinks they can “adapt” in the short term, “there will be a tipping point at some point”. Even at the moment, packing out their pubs seven nights a week, “it’s difficult for us to break even”, he said.

There will be a discount for small businesses to transition to the higher business rates level, but by year three, almost the full amount is expected to be payable, and Mr Carroll described it as “getting f***** slowly, instead of getting f***** overnight”.

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Sean Hughes, who owns multiple hospitality venues in St Albans, has also seen vast increases in the assessed value of his properties, and was sharply critical of the transitional arrangements the government is implementing.

He told Sky News: “Fundamental business rate reform was promised and we have total chaos. If [the system] was fair, why would they need transitional relief periods?”

A spokesperson of the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), which assesses the value of commercial properties for business rates purposes, told Sky News: “At the last revaluation, some sectors including hospitality were significantly affected by the pandemic, which resulted in much lower rateable values than they would have seen otherwise. Businesses that have now seen a recovery in trade are also likely to see an increase in their rateable value.”

However, Sky News has seen evidence of businesses whose assessed value did not decrease when assessed during the pandemic, but actually rose, and has risen dramatically this year.

Data compiled by the Pubs Advisory Service, shows that the number of pubs in the UK has decreased by nearly 5% in three years, but the average value of the properties has risen by an average of 36.82% per pub.

And analysis by UK Hospitality, the trade body that represents hospitality businesses, has found that over the next three years, the average pub will pay an extra £12,900 in business rates, even with the transitional arrangements, while an average hotel will see its bill soar by £205,200.

The body adds that by 2028/29, an average pub’s business rates will have increased by 76% and an average hotel’s by 115%, compared to 16% for a distribution warehouse like the ones the web giants use.

It’s not just the business rates rise that is worrying owners – it is the increase in employers’ national insurance implemented at the last budget, the increase in energy bills over the last few years, and the rise in the minimum wage, particularly for young people.

With the budget set to squeeze disposal income, there is little room for price increases to make up the shortfall either.

In a letter to the chancellor on Friday, Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper said small business owners “have been pushed to tears as they’re hit with the bombshell of higher business rates bills”, noting that “the government has chosen not to use the full powers it gave itself to throw high streets a lifeline”.

She added that businesses had been promised “permanently lower business rates”, but it appears the government has “broken yet another promise, by imposing a stealth tax not just on people, but on treasured high street businesses too”, and called on ministers to “throw our high streets and Britain’s hospitality sector a lifeline”.

Conservative shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith published his own analysis of the government’s budget measures on Friday morning, that found they will “hammer British pubs”.

Of the chancellor, he said: “She pretended in her budget speech to be supportive, whilst the true detail is that a combination of rate revaluations and scrapping reliefs will leave most pubs paying thousands of pounds more than they cannot afford.”

Kate Nicholls, Chair of UKHospitality, said in a statement: “The government promised in its manifesto that it would level the playing field between the high street and online giants. The plan in the budget to achieve this is quickly unravelling, and will deliver the exact opposite.”

She said they “repeatedly warned the Treasury” of the impending impacted of the value reassessment, but nonetheless, hospitality businesses are now facing “eye-watering increases”.

She added: “We agree with its reforms to deliver permanently lower business rates for hospitality and we appreciate the package of transitional relief, but its current proposal is not delivering lower bills. A 20p discount for hospitality would. We urge the chancellor to revisit.”

Politics

Polymarket puts December rate-cut odds at 87% as crypto stocks climb

Published

13 hours ago

November 28, 2025

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Polymarket puts December rate-cut odds at 87% as crypto stocks climb

Several crypto-linked stocks climbed on Friday as prediction-market odds of a December rate cut surged to 87% on Polymarket, the highest level this month.

Three US-listed Bitcoin miners led the rally, with Cleanspark, Riot Platforms and Cipher Mining all rising in the session and showing double-digit gains over the past five days.

Federal Reserve, United States, Predictions — *Probability of a US rate cut in December. Source:* *Polymarket*

Yahoo Finance data showed Circle, the issuer of USDC, jumped nearly 10% in early trading, while Michael Saylor’s Strategy and Coinbase notched more modest increases at the time of writing.

Bitcoin (BTC) was also up around 7% on the week, after dropping to around $82,000 on Nov. 21, according to CoinGecko data.

Much of the volatility in prediction-market pricing this month has been driven by comments from Federal Reserve officials.

On Oct. 29, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said a December cut was “not a foregone conclusion,” a remark investors took as hawkish — which means the Fed could delay rate cuts and keep conditions tight. Polymarket odds slipped from 89% the day before to as low as 22% by Nov. 20.

Sentiment shifted on Nov. 17 after Fed Governor Christopher Waller said the central bank should consider cutting rates next month, arguing that “the labor market is still weak and near stall speed” and that inflation is now “relatively close” to the Fed’s 2% target.

Prediction markets expand as demand surges

Prediction markets, such as Kalshi and Polymarket, which enable bettors to wager on the outcomes of real-world events, have expanded their reach and influence this year.

On Nov. 13, Polymarket inked a multi-year agreement with TKO Group Holdings to serve as the official prediction-market partner for the Ultimate Fighting Championships and Zuffa Boxing. The partnership came shortly after it partnered with North American fantasy sports operator PrizePicks.

The same month, Kalshi raised $1 billion from Sequoia Capital and CapitalG, pushing its valuation to $11 billion, according to a TechCrunch report citing a person familiar with the deal. The new round followed a $300 million raise in October.

On Nov. 19, rumors emerged that Coinbase is developing its own prediction-market platform after tech researcher Jane Manchun Wong posted screenshots of an unreleased site. Wong’s images indicated the product would be offered through Coinbase Financial Markets and backed by Kalshi.

On Wednesday, Robinhood said prediction markets have quickly become one of its fastest-growing revenue drivers, with more than one million users trading nine billion contracts since the product launched in March through a partnership with Kalshi.

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