With his pledge to reform education, Sir Keir has embarked on his most personal – and political – ambition yet
Breaking the “class ceiling” with the promise that a child’s start in life won’t determine where they end up. The last of Sir Keir Starmer’s five missions of a would-be Labour government is perhaps the most personal – and political – yet.
Personal because the Labour leader clearly sees himself as the embodiment of his mission to “tear down barriers of opportunity that hold people back”: his story began in a “pebble-dash semi” with working class parents and could end at Number 10 Downing Street as our next prime minister.
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He was the first in his family to go to university and have a white collar profession, going on to become the head of the Crown Prosecution Service and a knight of the realm.
“Our core purpose and my personal cause is to fight – at every stage for every child – the pernicious idea that background equals destiny,” he told his audience at a higher education college in Kent. “Breaking that link, that’s what Labour is for. I’ve always felt it and it runs very deep for me.”
But it is political too: Sir Keir trying to prove to working class voters that this north London lawyer – he’s the third Labour leader in a row to hail from Camden or Islington – shares their values.
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Starmer asked how Labour will level up schools
He is of the view that Labour has drifted too far from working people – not just in the run-up to 2019 when Boris Johnson seized Labour’s red wall, but in the decade before too. A big part of this for Sir Keir, then, was to try to speak to people who are disaffected or, as he says, his toolmaker father was, “disrespected” in a society that values academic qualifications over vocational ones.
While these five “missions” are sometimes criticised for being rather amorphous and lacking in detail, Sir Keir backed this one with a handful of clear policies and pledges: a focus on ‘oracy’ to give all children more confidence, an expansion of creative subjects to the age of 16 to broaden opportunities beyond narrow academia and a promise to have half a million children hitting early learning targets by 2030.
But even the most charitable observer would be hard-pressed to see how the measures Sir Keir announced on Thursday even approaches meeting his breathtaking goal. This is a Labour leader who wants nothing less than an end to the idea that your background will determine where you get to in life.
When asked by Sky News when he wanted to get state schools to the level of private schools, he told me he “hoped” to achieve that within five years of a Labour government.
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Protesters interrupt Starmer speech
Is this would-be prime minister making promises he can’t keep?
It’s hard to see how. On the one hand, the gap between private and state school funding per pupil has doubled in the decade to the end of 2021, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies, from a difference of £3,100 per pupil in 2010 to £6,500 in 2021. On the other, Sir Keir is clear that there isn’t a pot of money for Labour to pour into schools. As he said himself on Thursday, funding increases can only come through economic growth.
This raises obvious questions as to the mismatch between ambition and reality. Is this would-be prime minister making promises he cannot keep?
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Paul Whiteman, general secretary of the National Association of Headteachers said of Sir Keir’s plans: “If these ambitions are to be fulfilled, significant additional investment will be needed…it is right to have high ambitions, but schools must have the resources they need if they are to play their part in delivering them.”
Sir Keir knows this. But he too knows that promising big spending pledges opens up a flank on the economy that the Tories will seek to attack. He won’t take that risk.
On average, nineteen points ahead of Rishi Sunak in the polls and with an opponent who is struggling to deliver any of his own five pledges, Sir Keir has probably calculated that he doesn’t need to do much more than not mess up.
Around party conference in October, Labour’s likely to turn the five missions – growing the economy, safer streets, a better NHS, opportunity for all, and clean power – into more precise pledges. But don’t expect big promises on public services from this Labour party ahead of the election.
Sir Keir might talk about being a radical, but when it comes to an election he looks on course to comfortable win, he’s going to be very conservative.
Can it be a coincidence that US planes attacked Syria around the very time the Epstein files were released?
It would be cynical – but then again, it would be how politics works.
The deadline-day release of the Epstein files had White House media management written all over it, unredacted.
Initial searches for Trump’s name within the Department of Justice search function returned nothing, while the presence of former president Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was everywhere.
It is PR strategy 101 – front-load the release of documents with the Democrat stuff and save any possible Trump content for a soft landing sometime between Christmas and New Year.
Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein. Pic: NBC
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By that time, the public will have softened its focus on the story – it’s what the festive season does.
The presence of celebrity in the latest release might also feather Trump’s bed.
It’s clear that iconic superstars like Mick Jagger and Diana Ross were courted by Epstein as innocents, ignorant of his criminality. To see them in the files cements a narrative of a monster who lured the unsuspecting into his orbit.
We support Jagger and Ross as treasured icons, so we remind ourselves that simply being included in the files doesn’t equate to wrongdoing or knowledge of it. In turn, it shapes an empathy around the predicament that will extend to Trump and, perhaps, the benefit of any doubt.
Of course, not everyone will see it that way – the people who see a cynical exercise in delay and obfuscation, constituting a gross insult to the Epstein survivors at the heart of the story.
Jeffrey Epstein and Michael Jackson. Pic: US DoJ
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For all the talk (by the Trump administration) of a tight time scale and a willingness to act transparently, survivors and their supporters point out that Donald Trump could have published all the Epstein files long ago, never mind drip feed them with wide-ranging redactions.
Not to have done so is an affront to them and an attempt to evade accountability.
For all the talk about the release of the files, their significance is undermined by the lack of context. We are shown pictures and documents that reflect the life of a thoroughly unpleasant individual who inflicted suffering on an industrial scale. But with redactions, and without explanations, we are left having to join the dots in an effort to establish criminal behaviour and blame.
It is a level of uncertainty surrounding the Epstein files and a source of dissatisfaction to survivors, for whom justice further delayed is justice further denied.
Ukraine has struck a Russian tanker in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time, a Kyiv intelligence source has said.
The ship, called the Qendil, suffered “critical damage” in the attack, according to a member of the SBU, Ukraine’s internal security agency.
The tanker is said to be part of Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” – a group of ageing vessels that Kyiv alleges helps Moscow exports large quantities of crude oil despite Western sanctions.
The SBU source said Ukrainian drones hit the ship in neutral waters more than 2,000 kilometres (1,243 miles) from Ukraine.
They said: “Russia used this tanker to circumvent sanctions and earn money that went to the war against Ukraine.
“Therefore, from the point of view of international law and the laws and customs of war, this is an absolutely legitimate target for the SBU.
“The enemy must understand that Ukraine will not stop and will strike it anywhere in the world, wherever it may be.”
The vessel was empty at the time of the attack, the Ukrainian source added.
Speaking during a live TV event, Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, claimed the attack would not disrupt supplies, but vowed that Russia would retaliate nonetheless.
He added that Russia regularly responded with “much stronger strikes” against Ukraine.
Putin also warned against any threat to blockade Russia’s coastal exclave Kaliningrad, which he said would “just lead to unseen escalation of the conflict” and could trigger a “large-scale international conflict”.
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Sky military analyst Michael Clarke said Ukraine’s claim about causing significant damage to the ship was “probably true”.
He added: “The Ukrainians obviously feel that they can legitimise this sort of operation.”
The Qendil, pictured near Istanbul last month. Pic: Reuters
The attack comes after the European Union announced it would provide a €90bn (£79bn) interest-free loan to Ukraine.
Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the Ukrainian parliament, told Sky News that the money would “tremendously enhance” Kyiv’s defensive capabilities.
However, he said the International Monetary Fund estimated that Ukraine needed $137bn to “keep running”.
“The aggressor should be punished”, Mr Merezhko added, as he argued that frozen Russian assets in Europe should be used to help fund his country’s defence.
He vowed that Ukraine would “continue to fight” for the move, adding that it was “a matter of justice”.
Protesters have stormed the headquarters of two major newspapers in Bangladesh, amid widespread unrest following the death of a political activist.
A mob set fire to the offices of the Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily newspaper and the English-language Daily Star in the capital Dhaka, leaving journalists and other staff stuck inside.
The Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily was one of the two newspapers that were targeted. Pic: AP.
One of the Daily Star’s journalists, Zyma Islam, wrote on Facebook: “I can’t breathe anymore. There’s too much smoke.”
Both dailies stopped updating their online editions after the attacks and did not publish broadsheets on Friday.
Troops were deployed to the Star building and firefighters had to rescue the journalists trapped inside. The blaze was brought under control early on Friday.
The latest protests erupted a year after the July Revolution ousted PM Sheikh Hasina. Pic: PA.
Political activist Sharif Osman Hadi died in hospital late on Thursday, six days after the youth leader was shot while riding on a rickshaw in Dhaka.
Bangladesh’s interim government urged people on Friday to resist violence as police and paramilitary troops fanned out
across the capital and other cities following the protests overnight. They have sparked concerns of fresh unrest ahead of national elections, which Mr Hadi had been due to stand in.
He was a prominent activist in the political uprising last year that forced the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to flee the country. Mr Hadi spent six days on life support in a hospital in Singapore before he succumbed to his injuries.
Mr Hadi died a week after he was shot by a man on a motorbike. Pic: PA.
Hundreds of protesters took to the streets following news of Mr Hadi’s death on Thursday night, where they rallied at Shahbagh Square near the Dhaka University campus, according to media reports.
A group of demonstrators gathered outside the head office of the Muslim-majority country’s leading Bengali-language Prothom Alo daily, before vandalising the building and setting it on fire.
A few hundred yards away, another group of protesters pushed into the Daily Star offices and set fire to the building. The protesters are believed to have targeted the papers for their alleged links with India and closeness to Bangladesh‘s interim leader, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus.
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Although calm had returned to much of the country on Friday morning, protesters carrying national flags and placards
continued demonstrating at Shahbagh Square in Dhaka, chanting slogans and vowing not to return until justice was served.
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Last year’s mass uprising erupted from student protests against a quota system that awarded 30% of government jobs to relatives of veterans.
The July 2024 protest, which resulted in as many as 1,400 deaths according to the United Nations, was dubbed the first “Gen Z” revolution.
Bangladesh’s former prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed was forced to resign in August 2024 and fled to India. She was later sentenced to death in absentia.
Sheikh Hasina was sentenced to death in absentia. Pic: AP
Dr Yunus was then sworn in as interim leader.
The country’s Islamists and other opponents of Ms Hasida have accused her government for being subservient to India.
Mr Hadi was a fierce critic of Ms Hasina and neighbouring India.
He had planned to run as an independent candidate in a constituency in Dhaka at the next national elections due to be held in February.
Authorities said they had identified the suspects in Mr Hadi’s shooting, and the assassin was also likely to have fled to India. Two men on a motorbike followed Hadi and one opened fire before they fled the scene.
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