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.
World
Egypt: Two Britons believed to be among 16 missing as tourist boat sinks after being ‘hit by large wave’
Two Britons are believed to be among more than a dozen people missing after a boat sank in the Red Sea off the Egyptian coast.
The yacht, called Sea Story, had 44 people on board, including 31 tourists of varying nationalities and 13 crew.
Authorities are searching for 16 people, including 12 foreign nationals and four Egyptians, the governor of the Red Sea region said, adding that 28 other people had been rescued.
Preliminary reports suggested a sudden large wave struck the vessel, capsizing it within about five minutes, governor Amr Hanafi said.
“Some passengers were in their cabins, which is why they were unable to escape,” he added in a statement.
Survivors rescued from the Sea Story in Marsa Alam. Pic: STR/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
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Passengers rescued from sunken tourist boat
The people who were rescued only suffered minor injuries such as bruises and scrapes with none needing hospital treatment.
A Foreign, Commonwealth and Development office spokesperson said: “We are providing consular support to a number of British nationals and their families following an incident in Egypt and are in contact with the local authorities.”
The foreign nationals aboard the 34-metre-long vessel, owned by an Egyptian national, included Americans, Belgians, British, Chinese, Finns, Germans, Irish, Poles, Slovakians, Spanish, and Swiss.
Sea Story had no technical problems, obtained all required permits before the trip, and was last checked for naval safety in March, according to officials.
The four-deck, wooden-hulled motor yacht was part of a multi-day diving trip when it went down near the coastal town of Marsa Alam following warnings about rough weather.
Officials said a distress call was received at 5.30am local time on Monday.
The boat had left Port Ghalib in Marsa Alam on Sunday and was scheduled to reach its destination of Hurghada Marina on 29 November.
The Sea Story had 44 people on board. File pic: Dive Pro Liveaboard
Some survivors had been airlifted to safety on a helicopter, officials said.
The firm that operates the yacht, Dive Pro Liveaboard in Hurghada, said it has no information on the matter.
According to its maker’s website, the Sea Story was built in 2022.
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The incident comes after the Egyptian Meteorological Authority issued a warning on Saturday about turbulence and high waves on the Red Sea.
The organisation had advised against maritime activity for Sunday and Monday.
Some tourist companies have stopped or limited operations on the Red Sea due to the potential dangers from conflicts in the region.
A motion has been filed to drop the charges against Donald Trump of plotting to overturn the 2020 US presidential election result.
Mr Trump was first indicted on four felonies in August 2023: Conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.
The president-elect pleaded not guilty to all charges and the case was then put on hold for months as Mr Trump’s team argued he could not be prosecuted.
Special Counsel Jack Smith. Pic: Reuters
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On Monday, prosecutors working with special counsel Jack Smith, who had led the investigation, asked a federal judge to dismiss the case over long-standing US justice department policy, dating back to the 1970s, that presidents cannot be prosecuted while in office.
It marks the end of the department’s landmark effort to hold Mr Trump accountable for the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 when thousands of Trump supporters assaulted police, broke through barricades, and swarmed the Capitol in a bid to prevent the US Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Mr Smith’s team had been assessing how to wind down both the election interference case and the separate classified documents case in the wake of Mr Trump’s election victory over vice president Kamala Harris earlier this month, effectively killing any chance of success for the case.
In court papers, prosecutors said “the [US] Constitution requires that this case be dismissed before the defendant is inaugurated”.
They said the ban [on prosecuting sitting presidents] “is categorical and does not turn on the gravity of the crimes charged, the strength of the government’s proof, or the merits of the prosecution, which the government stands fully behind”.
Mr Trump, who has said he would sack Mr Smith as soon as he takes office in January, and promised to pardon some convicted rioters, has long dismissed both the 2020 election interference case and the separate classified documents case as politically motivated.
Trump supporters try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington. Pic: AP
He was accused of illegally keeping classified papers after leaving office in 2021, some of which were allegedly found in his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.
The election interference case stalled after the US Supreme Court ruled in July that former presidents have broad immunity from prosecution, which Mr Trump’s lawyers exploited to demand the charges against him be dismissed.
Mr Smith’s request to drop the case still needs to be approved by US District Judge Tanya Chutkan.
No date had been set for a trial.
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At least 1,500 cases have been brought against those accused of trying to overthrow the election result on 6 January 2021, resulting in more than 1,100 convictions, the Associated Press said.
More than 950 defendants have been sentenced and 600 of them jailed for terms ranging from a few days to 22 years.
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