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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?

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Labour leader attempts conference reset

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.

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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.

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‘Shameful’ that black boys in London more likely to die than white boys, says Met Police chief

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'Shameful' that black boys in London more likely to die than white boys, says Met Police chief

It is “shameful” that black boys growing up in London are “far more likely” to die than white boys, Metropolitan Police chief Sir Mark Rowley has told Sky News.

The commissioner told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips that relations with minority communities “is difficult for us”.

Sir Mark, who came out of retirement to become head of the UK’s largest police force in 2022, said: “We can’t pretend otherwise that we’ve got a history between policing and black communities where policing has got a lot wrong.

“And we get a lot more right today, but we do still make mistakes. That’s not in doubt. I’m being as relentless in that as it can be.”

He said the “vast majority” of the force are “good people”.

However, he added: “But that legacy, combined with the tragedy that some of this crime falls most heavily in black communities, that creates a real problem because the legacy creates concern.”

Sir Mark, who also leads the UK’s counter-terrorism policing, said it is “not right” that black boys growing up in London “are far more likely to be dead by the time they’re 18” than white boys.

“That’s, I think, shameful for the city,” he admitted.

The Met Police chief’s admission comes two years after an official report found the force is institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic.

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Police chase suspected phone thief

Baroness Casey was commissioned in 2021 to look into the Met Police after serving police officer Wayne Couzens abducted, raped and murdered Sarah Everard.

She pinned the primary blame for the Met’s culture on its past leadership and found that stop and search and the use of force against black people was excessive.

At the time, Sir Mark, who had been commissioner for six months when the report was published, said he would not use the labels of institutionally racist, institutionally misogynistic and institutionally homophobic, which Casey insisted the Met deserved.

However, London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who helped hire Sir Mark – and could fire him – made it clear the commissioner agreed with Baroness Casey’s verdict.

After the report was released, Sir Mark said “institutional” was political language so he was not going to use it, but he accepted “we have racists, misogynists…systematic failings, management failings, cultural failings”.

A few months after the report, Sir Mark launched a two-year £366m plan to overhaul the Met, including increased emphasis on neighbourhood policing to rebuild public trust and plans to recruit 500 more community support officers and an extra 565 people to work with teams investigating domestic violence, sexual offences and child sexual abuse and exploitation.

Watch the full interview on Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips from 8.30am on Sunday.

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Unite votes to suspend Angela Rayner over Birmingham bin strike

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Unite votes to suspend Angela Rayner over Birmingham bin strike

Labour’s largest union donor, Unite, has voted to suspend Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner over her role in the Birmingham bin strike row.

Members of the trade union, one of the UK’s largest, also “overwhelmingly” voted to “re-examine its relationship” with Labour over the issue.

They said Ms Rayner, who is also housing, communities and local government secretary, Birmingham Council’s leader, John Cotton, and other Labour councillors had been suspended for “bringing the union into disrepute”.

There was confusion over Ms Rayner’s membership of Unite, with her office having said she was no longer a member and resigned months ago and therefore could not be suspended.

But Unite said she was registered as a member. Parliament’s latest register of interests had her down as a member in May.

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The union said an emergency motion was put to members at its policy conference in Brighton on Friday.

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Unite is one of the Labour Party’s largest union donors, donating £414,610 in the first quarter of 2025 – the highest amount in that period by a union, company or individual.

The union condemned Birmingham’s Labour council and the government for “attacking the bin workers”.

Mountains of rubbish have been piling up in the city since January after workers first went on strike over changes to their pay, with all-out strike action starting in March. An agreement has still not been made.

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Rat catcher tackling Birmingham’s bins problem

Ms Rayner and the councillors had their membership suspended for “effectively firing and rehiring the workers, who are striking over pay cuts of up to £8,000”, the union added.

‘Missing in action’

General secretary Sharon Graham told Sky News on Saturday morning: “Angela Rayner, who has the power to solve this dispute, has been missing in action, has not been involved, is refusing to come to the table.”

She had earlier said: “Unite is crystal clear, it will call out bad employers regardless of the colour of their rosette.

“Angela Rayner has had every opportunity to intervene and resolve this dispute but has instead backed a rogue council that has peddled lies and smeared its workers fighting huge pay cuts.

“The disgraceful actions of the government and a so-called Labour council, is essentially fire and rehire and makes a joke of the Employment Relations Act promises.

“People up and down the country are asking whose side is the Labour government on and coming up with the answer not workers.”

SN pics from 10/04/25 Tyseley Lane, Tyseley, Birmingham showing some rubbish piling up because of bin strikes
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Piles of rubbish built up around Birmingham because of the strike over pay

Sir Keir Starmer’s spokesman said the government’s “priority is and always has been the residents of Birmingham”.

He said the decision by Unite workers to go on strike had “caused disruption” to the city.

“We’ve worked to clean up streets and remain in close contact with the council […] as we support its recovery,” he added.

A total of 800 Unite delegates voted on the motion.

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Binance’s CZ threatens to sue Bloomberg over Trump stablecoin report

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Binance’s CZ threatens to sue Bloomberg over Trump stablecoin report

Binance’s CZ threatens to sue Bloomberg over Trump stablecoin report

Binance co-founder CZ has dismissed a Bloomberg report linking him to the Trump-backed USD1 stablecoin, threatening legal action over alleged defamation.

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