Outside the Labour conference hall in Liverpool, the winds were up and the rain pouring down.
Back in the City of London, the markets were still in turmoil as tensions flared between the prime minister and chancellor about how to handle the fallout from their (non) budget.
But if these are turbulent times, inside the conference hall Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer was a man carrying a calm sense of confidence. This was a leader who thinks his moment has arrived.
It was so different to a year ago, when Sir Keir was heckled in the hall by the Labour left as he delivered his leader’s speech and his supporters were drafted in to try to drown out the criticism with cheers.
Those battles over, the ground won. This was a leader placing Labour firmly in the centre ground and taking aim at Tory territory, pitching to be the party of economic competence, business and aspiration.
And Sir Keir was so different too: I remember back in May 2021 when Labour suffered that not just a humiliating by-election defeat in Hartlepool – the former heartland town electing the first Tory MP for the first time in 62 years – but also a slew of losses in local elections across the red wall.
More on Keir Starmer
Related Topics:
As Boris Johnson embarked on a tour of his new territory in the West Midlands and Hartlepool, Sir Keir remained holed up in London. There was no victory lap to be had anywhere in the country. It was a real low point, a raw moment for the Labour leader. And it took time to build back.
But on Tuesday, the Labour leader cut a different figure. He was serious, assured and definitely not second-guessing himself. He became increasingly confident throughout the summer as his nemesis Mr Johnson was deposed, and the new Conservative administration’s woes seem to have shifted to the next gear.
Advertisement
Hope has given way to belief. If you take one thing away from this conference, it is that this is now a party that believes – from top to bottom – it can win the next general election.
This is what Angela Rayner, the deputy leader, told me when I asked if she had a message for Liz Truss: “Do not completely trash the country before we take over and make it better.”
Jonathan Reynolds, the shadow business secretary, told me that this was the best party conference he’d ever been to, and he’s been coming since 1999.
This one was for him the best since the days of Tony Blair, because “of what it means for the country to have a party that can replace the Conservatives”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
3:52
Starmer has eye on Tory territory
Sir Keir has always refused to be cast in the clothes of any past Labour leader, but in this speech on Tuesday he positioned himself as the heir of Blair, even quoting the former prime minister’s own words when he described Labour as the “political wing of the British people”.
Labour was a party of the aspiration, of economic responsibility, of the centre ground. These all things Sir Keir would have struggled to say a year ago – now being cheered.
“The party is unified,” said one senior figure of the left of the party. “We have been out of power for 12 years, we can’t do any more time in opposition. You can still be centre ground and be radical.”
And there were radical ideas in this speech, the most eye-catching of which was the plan for a Labour government to set up a publicly owned energy group – Great British Energy – with the ability to invest directly in renewable energy and nuclear projects within the first year of being in power.
That confidence is also being driven by polling, with a YouGov poll on Monday that put Labour on a 17 point lead against the Tories – its biggest poll lead in two decades – prompting jubilation in Liverpool.
But there is unease too that Sir Keir’s success is down to Tory failures rather than a change in fortunes between the party and the electorate, and a fear that the gains made could be undone if the Conservative government begins to please voters again. A quiet acknowledgement, if you like, that Sir Keir still hasn’t sealed the deal with the electorate.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
11:08
Labour pledges UK energy firm
When I asked Ms Rayner if the public were looking again at Labour but still don’t love Labour, she was – typically – pretty forthright. “Yes, and you know nobody is complacent. And we all know that in 2019 we’ve got a real kicking. The public didn’t see us as the future, but now they’re seeing what the Conservatives have done.”
The sinking feeling of defeat that’s plagued Labour since 2010 is now settling on the Conservative Party – a spectacle unimaginable back in 2019 when Mr Johnson romped home with an 80-seat majority and the chance to run the country for another two terms.
Now Labour has a chance to win those voters back with Sir Keir’s brand of patriotism, integrity and seriousness. As the Labour leader himself put it on Tuesday night as he addressed journalists and party members at the annual Mirror party: “You can get a sense of the political weather, the temperature, what I think about this conference is it has a different feel to it, the Labour Party is confident.”
An election is still two years away, but Labour now with a genuine opportunity to get into government. After 12 years out of power, is the tide finally about to turn?
The IDF says it mistakenly identified a convoy of aid workers as a threat – following the emergence of a video which proved their ambulances were clearly marked when Israeli troops opened fire on them.
The bodies of 15 aid workers – including eight medics working for the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) – were found in a “mass grave” after the incident, according to the head of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Jonathan Whittall.
The Israeli military originally claimed an investigation found the vehicles did not have any headlights or emergency signals and were therefore targeted as they looked “suspicious”.
But video footage obtained by the PRCS, and verified by Sky News, showed the ambulances and a fire vehicle clearly marked with flashing red lights.
In a briefing from the IDF, it said the ambulances arrived in the Tel Sultan neighbourhood in Rafah shortly after a Hamas police vehicle drove through.
Image: Palestinians mourning the medics after their bodies were recovered. Pic: Reuters
An IDF surveillance aircraft was watching the movement of the ambulances and notified troops on the ground. The IDF said it will not be releasing that footage.
When the ambulances arrived, the soldiers opened fire, thinking the medics were a threat, according to the IDF.
The soldiers were surprised by the convoy stopping on the road and several people getting out quickly and running, the IDF claimed, adding the soldiers were unaware the suspects were in fact unarmed medics.
An Israeli military official would not say how far away troops were when they fired on the vehicles.
The IDF acknowledged that its statement claiming that the ambulances had their lights off was incorrect, and was based on the testimony from the soldiers in the incident.
The newly emerged video footage showed that the ambulances were clearly identifiable and had their lights on, the IDF said.
The IDF added that there will be a re-investigation to look into this discrepancy.
Image: The clip is filmed through a vehicle windscreen – with three red light vehicles visible in front
Addressing the fact the aid workers’ bodies were buried in a mass grave, the IDF said in its briefing this is an approved and regular practice to prevent wild dogs and other animals from eating the corpses.
The IDF could not explain why the ambulances were also buried.
The IDF said six of the 15 people killed were linked to Hamas, but revealed no detail to support the claim.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:22
Bodies of aid workers found in Gaza
The newly emerged footage of the incident was discovered on a phone belonging to one of the workers who was killed, PRCS president Dr Younis Al Khatib said.
“His phone was found with his body and he recorded the whole event,” he said. “His last words before being shot, ‘Forgive me, mom. I just wanted to help people. I wanted to save lives’.”
Sky News used an aftermath video and satellite imagery to verify the location and timing of the newly emerged footage of the incident.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
2:43
Aid worker attacks increasing
It was filmed on 23 March north of Rafah and shows a convoy of marked ambulances and a fire-fighting vehicle travelling south along a road towards the city centre. All the vehicles visible in the convoy have their flashing lights on.
The footage was filmed early in the morning, with a satellite image seen by Sky News taken at 9.48am local time on the same day showing a group of vehicles bunched together off the road.
Contemplating the turmoil sown by the return of President Trump, nobody could deny that the results of leadership elections in major nations matter to the rest of the world.
Take just the members of the G7 – so-called rich, industrialised democracies. Italy elected Giorgia Meloni in 2022, confirming the rise of the far-right. She was not only Italy’s first female leader, she was also the first from a neo-fascist party since Mussolini.
Barring accidents, the next potentially transformative election in what used to be called the “Western alliance” will not be for two years.
France is due to elect a new president to succeed Emmanuel Macron in the summer of 2027. The contest is already plagued by undercurrents of disruption, conflict between politicians and the law, and populism – similar to the fires burning elsewhere in the US and Europe.
This week French judges banned the frontrunner to win the presidency from running for office for the next five years. It looked as though they have knocked Marine Le Pen out of the race.
Nobody, least of all her, the leader of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), knows what is going to happen next in French politics.
More on France
Related Topics:
In opinion polls just over half of the French population, between 54% and 57%, agreed that justice had run its course. “The law is the same for everyone,” President Macron declared.
After lengthy consideration by a tribunal of three judges, Le Pen and nine other former RN MEPs were found guilty of illegally siphoning off some €4.4m (£3.7m) of funds from the European Parliament for political operations in France, not for personal gain.
Le Pen was sentenced to a five-year ban and four years in prison, not to begin before the appeals process had been concluded. Even then that sentence in France would normally amount to two years’ house arrest wearing an ankle alarm.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
2:52
Marine Le Pen hits out at ban
French presidents, such as Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, have been convicted before. Controversy is flaring because Le Pen was given an extra punishment: the immediate ban on running for political office, starting this week.
Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, her second in command at RN, likened the ban to a “nuclear bomb” and a “political death penalty”. Speaking in L’Assemblee Nationale, of which she is still a member, Le Pen identified herself with Alexei Navalny, the dissident leader murdered in Russia, and Ekrem Imamoglu, the recently imprisoned Turkish opposition leader and mayor of Istanbul.
The ban was imposed at the discretion of the chief judge Benedicte de Perthuis, a former business consultant, Francois Bayrou, France’s Macronist prime minister admitted he was “troubled” by the verdict. Not surprisingly perhaps from him, since the prosecution is appealing against verdicts in a similar case of political embezzlement, in which Bayrou’s party was found guilty but he was acquitted, escaping any possibility of a ban.
Bayrou is expected to be a candidate for the presidency. Meanwhile, RN has the power to bring down his government since it is the largest party in the Assembly, with 37%, but was kept out of power by a coalition.
Image: Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella. File pic: AP
Populist forces on both sides of the Atlantic rushed to support Marine Le Pen. Matteo Salvini in Italy, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Vladimir Putin‘s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov all denounced what they saw as a “violation of democratic norms”. Hungary’s Viktor Orban said on X “Je suis Marine Le Pen”. Orban’s post came on the same platform Donald Trump Jr posted that “JD Vance was right about everything”, a reference to the US vice president’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in which he claimed Europe was silencing populist opposition.
President Trump weighed in: “The Witch Hunt against Marine Le Pen is another example of European Leftists using Lawfare to silence Free Speech… it is the same ‘playbook’ that was used against me.”
Le Pen has called for bans and tough sentences for corrupt politicians from other parties. In France, mainstream commentators are accusing her of hypocrisy and “Trumpisme” for attacking the courts now.
They also allege, or rather hope, that RN’s anger is endangering Marine Le Pen’s drive to make her party respectable with her so-called “wear a neck-tie strategy”, designed to dispel the loutish, racist image of her father’s Front National.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:26
Le Pen leaves court after guilty verdict
For all the protests, justice and politics are now inextricably mixed in France. A ban from political campaigning would be pointless for most convicts, who have no political ambitions.
Any suggestion that Le Pen was just being treated like any other citizen was dispelled when it was announced that her appeal would be speeded up to take place next summer. The president of the court de cassation conceded: “Justice knows how to adjust to circumstances… an election deadline in this case.”
The ban could be lifted in time to give Le Pen a year to stand for the presidency. At this stage, a full acquittal seems unlikely, given the weight of evidence against RN. That is awkward for her and her party because, presumably, she would be campaigning while under house arrest.
The best course of action for 29-year-old Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s apparent successor, or “Dauphin”, would be to stick with her now. He would gain little if he split RN by insisting she is fatally wounded.
Spreaker
This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only.
If she loses her appeal in a year’s time, his loyalty and indignation would be likely to boost his candidacy. Conventional wisdom is that without a lift he may be slick, but is too callow and too square to stand a chance of becoming president in 2027.
The far right in France is no different from the far right elsewhere – prone to internal rivalries and in-fighting.
The craggy intellectual Eric Zemmour came fourth in the first round in the last presidential contest in 2022. Back then he had the support of Marion Marechal-Le Pen, Marine Le Pen’s flighty niece. The two have since fallen out and may separately bid to carry the far-right torch.
Macron is riding high as an international statesman but he is unpopular at home. Even if he wanted to, he cannot stand again because of term limits.
His attempts to spawn an heir apparent have failed. The 34-year-old prime minister Gabriel Attal led Ensemble to crushing defeat in last year’s parliamentary elections.
Current prime minister Bayrou, and former prime minister Edouard Philippe, will probably make a bid for the centre-right vote. Bruno Retailleau, the trenchantly hardline interior minister, looks a stronger candidate for the Gaullist Les Republicains.
In the last presidential contest, Jean-Luc Melenchon of the hard-left La France Insoumise came third. He may fancy his chances of getting into the final two in 2027 against a right-wing candidate, unless the Socialists get it together. Or perhaps he may let through two finalists from the right and the extreme right.
It is a mess.
France and Europe need effective leadership from a French president. The unnecessary judicial suspension of Marine Le Pen’s candidacy has simply generated uncertainty. Her supporters are outraged and her foes no longer know who they are fighting against.
The French establishment thinks it will all blow over. Just as likely the controversy in France will strengthen the populist winds blowing across the continent and the US.
The IDF has admitted to mistakenly identifying a convoy of aid workers as a threat – following the emergence of a video which proved their ambulances were clearly marked when Israeli troops opened fire on them.
The bodies of 15 aid workers – including eight medics working for the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) – were found in a “mass grave” after the incident, according to the head of the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Jonathan Whittall.
The Israeli military originally claimed an investigation found the vehicles did not have any headlights or emergency signals and were therefore targeted as they looked “suspicious”.
But video footage obtained by the PRCS, and verified by Sky News, showed the ambulances and a fire vehicle clearly marked with flashing red lights.
In a briefing from the IDF, they said the ambulances arrived in the Tel Sultan neighbourhood in Rafah shortly after a Hamas police vehicle drove through.
Image: Palestinians mourning the medics after their bodies were recovered. Pic: Reuters
An IDF surveillance aircraft was watching the movement of the ambulances and notified troops on the ground. The IDF said it will not be releasing that footage.
When the ambulances arrived, the soldiers opened fire, thinking the medics were a threat, according to the IDF.
The soldiers were surprised by the convoy stopping on the road and several people getting out quickly and running, the IDF claimed, adding the soldiers were unaware the suspects were in fact unarmed medics.
An Israeli military official would not say how far away troops were when they fired on the vehicles.
The IDF acknowledged that its statement claiming that the ambulances had their lights off was incorrect, and was based on the testimony from the soldiers in the incident.
The newly emerged video footage showed that the ambulances were clearly identifiable and had their lights on, the IDF said.
The IDF added that there will be a re-investigation to look into this discrepancy.
Image: The clip is filmed through a vehicle windscreen – with three red light vehicles visible in front
Addressing the fact the aid workers’ bodies were buried in a mass grave, the IDF said in its briefing this is an approved and regular practice to prevent wild dogs and other animals from eating the corpses.
The IDF could not explain why the ambulances were also buried.
The IDF said six of the 15 people killed were linked to Hamas, but revealed no detail to support the claim.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:22
Bodies of aid workers found in Gaza
The newly emerged footage of the incident was discovered on a phone belonging to one of the workers who was killed, PRCS president Dr Younis Al Khatib said.
“His phone was found with his body and he recorded the whole event,” he said. “His last words before being shot, ‘Forgive me, mom. I just wanted to help people. I wanted to save lives’.”
Sky News used an aftermath video and satellite imagery to verify the location and timing of the newly emerged footage of the incident.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
2:43
Aid worker attacks increasing
It was filmed on 23 March north of Rafah and shows a convoy of marked ambulances and a fire-fighting vehicle travelling south along a road towards the city centre. All the vehicles visible in the convoy have their flashing lights on.
The footage was filmed early in the morning, with a satellite image seen by Sky News taken at 9.48am local time on the same day showing a group of vehicles bunched together off the road.