Keir Starmer must wait longer for his ‘99%’ moment – but Labour desperate to avoid election complacency
No wonder the Labour Party is desperate for a general election now and bitterly disappointed that Rishi Sunak has “bottled it”, in Keir Starmer’s words, and is sticking to his plan not to hold it until the autumn at the earliest.
Sir John Curtice, the UK polling guru, has gone on the record that there is “a 99% chance of Labour forming the next administration”.
What could possibly go wrong for Labour between now and the verdict of the voters?
Curtice’s one-in-a-hundred chance of falling short is comforting for Sir Keir Starmer, but nobody around him is treating victory as a done deal.
No one has slipped up in the way Cherie Blair did in the run-up to the 1997 election when she chatted to ITN’s political editor about “when” not “if” the family would be in Downing Street.
Party workers of all kinds, including the shadow cabinet, regional organisers, special advisers and press officers are being summoned to HQ for “no complacency” pep talks.
Sir Keir’s worries are dwarfed by the problems facing the Tories. Pic: Reuters
Trump’s 2016 win is a warning against complacency
At the start of the year, Starmer’s campaign manager Morgan McSweeney even produced a slide pack on the theme “polls do not predict the future”.
It listed recent examples from Australia, Germany and Norway, among others, where a party’s sustained lead in opinion polls did not deliver on the day. Trump’s defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016 being Exhibit A.
The country is three months further on from then and three months closer to the election.
Labour has sustained its remarkable lead of around 18 points for another three months, a gap that has been that wide for two years since Boris Johnson hit the skids.
And any local difficulties for Starmer are dwarfed by continuing troubles for the Tories.
Even as he tries to point to slightly improving economic circumstances, Rishi Sunak has been beset by further resignations.
Nevertheless, the Labour leadership is braced for a “narrowing in the polls”.
Some believe the PM will hold the election on his two-year anniversary. Pic: Reuters
The local elections in England and Wales on 2 May will be a big test of “real votes in real ballot boxes”, which politicians always say they prefer to polls.
In the last set of these elections, the Conservatives were on a high with a vote share calculated at 40%, with Labour on 30%. Those tables need to be more than reversed if Labour is to live up to its advanced billing, with the Tories dropping towards a vote share in the low 20s.
That would mean the Conservatives losing around 500 seats net – more than half of those they currently hold.
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Public interest, like voter turnout, tends to be higher in the big mayoral contests.
In London, the government has changed the rules to first past the post to damage the chances of Labour’s Sadiq Khan winning a third term.
Some Conservative campaigners are also playing dirty against him – as shown by a grim online video this week containing shots taken from New York City backed up with questionable presentation of crime statistics.
Khan says this is his hardest election but it seems unlikely that he will be defeated by Susan Hall, the Tory candidate in the capital’s mayoral race.
Khan’s ULEZ policy caused anger but he’ll probably keep his job. Pic: PA
By any measure, it would be a major shock if Labour fails to win back Blackpool South in the parliamentary by-election, which the Conservatives hope to bury in the excitement of local elections day.
The Conservatives have higher hopes elsewhere following the de facto bankruptcy of Birmingham Council.
It would be a grave blow to them if Andy Street is not re-elected as mayor of the West Midlands. Especially if coupled with defeat in the Tees Valley for Sunak’s controversial poster boy Lord (Ben) Houchen.
Conversely, should Labour underperform and the Tories hang on to some trophy mayors, there is renewed speculation that Sunak might be tempted to go for a general election in June. Not everyone agrees.
One grandee from the John Major years observed “it is very difficult to persuade a prime minister to lose now because he’ll only lose worse later”.
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A summer general election could come about another way if the Conservative local election performance is very bad.
In that scenario, Sunak’s allies expect him to go to the country rather than face a vote of no confidence by Tory MPs.
Labour’s will to win
On the assumption that the government struggles on through the summer, parliament is set to finalise the Rwanda deportation legislation when they return from their Easter break in mid-April.
The Conservatives are hoping for a boost in popularity if a flight gets off soon after that – or at least to reduce the threat from Reform and others on the right.
Sir Keir Starmer is also likely to find himself dealing with fractious elements in his party over the summer. There is no sign of peace in either of the conflict zones of Israel-Gaza or Ukraine-Russia.
Jeremy Corbyn and his backers do not share Starmer’s instincts in either conflict.
There are many pro-Palestinians among Labour’s likely voters. A divisive decision on whether to re-instate Diane Abbott in the party is looming, as is the choice of Labour candidate to stand in Corbyn’s Islington North constituency.
Angela Rayner’s capital gains tax affairs are being investigated by police. Pic: PA
Greater Manchester Police have reopened their inquiries into deputy leader Angela Rayner’s alleged non-payment of capital gains tax on her home.
Labour’s will to win is currently as strong as the Conservatives’ is weak. That and, firm discipline from the leadership, should keep the party broadly united.
Some on both left and right will continue to speak up – amplified by the many Tory sympathisers in the media.
In the space of a few days this week, the left-wing polemicist Owen Jones publicised his resignation from Labour and Peter Mandelson fired a warning shot on behalf of business against Rayner’s proposed new deal for workers.
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The likely dates PM will go to polls after rocky conferences
As things stand, the party conference season should go ahead as normal in September.
If they run true to form, any Labour discontent will bubble to the surface in Liverpool, while the Conservatives will try to use Birmingham to launch their general election campaign.
Some expect Sunak to use his leader’s speech to confirm polling day as Thursday 24 October – the day when he will chalk up precisely two years as prime minister.
Two hardened former cabinet ministers told me their working assumption is that it will not be until the 14 or 21 November, after the US election on 5 November. If it is Trump, he is bound to stick his oar into UK politics.
No prime minister, I am assured, would ruin Christmas by holding out until the last legal date in late January 2025 but, in extremis, 19 December this year remains a possibility, in the hope of repeating some of Boris Johnson‘s 2019 differential turnout coup.
Better late than never. It looks as if Sir Keir Starmer still has many months to navigate through until the Curtice-promised land of that general election.
The flying of St George’s flags across the country are creating “no-go” zones for NHS staff, with some facing frequent abuse, health bosses have warned.
Several NHS trust chief executives and leaders have said staff feel intimidated by the national symbols, including when they make home visits.
The findings follow a survey conducted among senior managers, 45% of whom were extremely concerned about discrimination towards staff.
A leader of a trust said anonymously that there were safety issues around how they work in the community, with nurses regularly visiting patients in their homes alone.
He said: “You’re going in on your own, you’re locking the door behind you.
“I have been into homes with people who have been convicted of sex offences, and we go in and provide care to them.
“It can be a really precarious situation, and they [the nurses] handle that absolutely brilliantly.
“The autonomy and the clinical decisions that they make within that, I think, is fantastic.
“We saw during the time when the flags went up – our staff, who are a large minority of black and Asian staff, feeling deliberately intimidated.
“It felt like the flags were up creating no-go zones. That’s what it felt like to them.
“You add that on top of real autonomous working, that real bravery of working in people’s homes, with an environment… [where] it feels like it’s an area that’s designed to exclude them.
“Our staff continue to work in that environment, and I think they deserve our real praise and thanks as a nation, frankly, for doing that within those really difficult circumstances.”
He added his trust had also seen “individual instances of aggression towards staff”.
File pic: iStock
Another NHS trust leader said a member of staff, who is white and has children of mixed heritage, had asked some people putting up flags to move so she could park her car.
“The individuals filmed what was happening, and then followed her, and she continued to receive abuse over a series of several days, not because she objected to the flags, but because she disturbed them,” they said.
“There are lots of stories like that. There are lots of stories where people have tried to take flags down outside of their own homes and have been abused and threatened as a consequence of that.”
The leader said the “springing up of flags everywhere has created another form of intimidation and concern for many, many of our staff”.
Daniel Elkes, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents trusts, said: “The NHS has relied on overseas recruitment for a long time to ensure we have the right workforce.
“We have a really diverse workforce and without that you can’t deliver the NHS.
“We are trying to recruit from the very places where we provide healthcare so the intake into the NHS is representative of British people from more diverse backgrounds.”
Professor Nicola Ranger, the Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary, said: “Following a summer of further racist disorder, it is little wonder a growing number of nursing staff report feeling unsafe, particularly when having to work on their own and often at night.
“The government and all politicians have to stop pandering to dangerous anti-migrant sentiments and employers must prioritise tackling racism and work with trade unions to develop stronger mechanisms to protect staff.”
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A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said there was “no place for intimidation, racism or abuse in our country or our NHS”, adding that threats and aggression should be reported to police.
They said the government valued the “diversity of our NHS”, and that workers “must be treated with dignity and respect”.
“Our flags represent our history, our heritage, and our values,” they said. “They are a symbol of our nation and belong to all of us – not just some of us.”
The survey findings come ahead of strike action by resident doctors over pay and jobs due to take place on Friday for five days.
A woman caught with £5bn in Bitcoin in the UK’s highest ever value money laundering investigation has been jailed for 11 years and eight months – after nearly five years on the run.
Zhimin Qian, 47, sat up in bed looking stunned when police kicked open the bedroom door of an Airbnb in a York suburb on 22 April last year.
She vanished and went on the run after officers seized more than 61,000 Bitcoin in the country’s biggest cryptocurrency seizure in a raid of her rented £5m home next to Hampstead Heath.
Qian – who fled China after carrying out a huge fraud and arrived in the UK in 2017 on a false St Kitts and Nevis passport in the name of Yadi Zhang – pleaded guilty to two money laundering offences at Southwark Crown Court.
Police said she styled herself the “Goddess of Wealth” and wore imperial robes as her sales teams offered 300% returns at conferences in luxury hotels in China promoting her “Britain Nice Life Insurance” scheme.
In a slick video played to targets, the narrator says “Britain is a nation of glories and dreams” over footage of the Houses of Parliament, Oxford University, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and the City of London.
Qian was already wanted in China over two other scams when she orchestrated the gigantic investment fraud, conning more than 128,000 victims from every province out of 40bn Yuan (around £4.6bn) between 2014 and 2017.
More than 80 people have been convicted in China over the scam, but Qian converted some of the proceeds into more than 70,000 Bitcoin and fled, crossing the border into Myanmar on a moped before arriving at Heathrow Airport in September 2017.
Jian Wen. Pic: CPS
The women rented a £17,000-a-month house in Hampstead. Pic: CPS
She recruited Jian Wen, who left her job in a south London Chinese takeaway, and the women moved into a £17,000-a-month rented £5m house next to Hampstead Heath, posing as the bosses on an international jewellery business.
They travelled extensively across Europe, buying jewellery and spending tens of thousands of pounds on designer clothes and shoes in Harrods, while Wen bought a £25,000 E-Class Mercedes and sent her son to the £6,000-a-term Heathside preparatory school.
Qian made extensive notes about her “grandiose” plans to increase her social standing.
She wanted to meet a royal duke, hoped the Dalai Lama would anoint her as a reincarnated Goddess, and dreamed of ruling Liberland – an unrecognised micronation on the Croation side of the Danube – as Queen.
The women travelled extensively. Pic: Met Police
Wen tried to buy Hampstead property. Pic: Met Police
But the women came to the attention of police when they tried to buy a £24m seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool, using more than £800,000 converted from Bitcoin.
Officers raided their home in October 2018 and seized £300,000 in cash and cheques, along with phones and laptops, and found a hand drawn “treasure map” leading from Harrods to a safety deposit box containing more devices.
When investigators finally accessed the cryptocurrency wallets stored on them, they thought someone had put the decimal point in the wrong place.
The 61,279 Bitcoin was then worth £1.4bn and has now soared to more than £5bn, making it the biggest ever cryptocurrency seizure in Britain and, until recently, the world.
Read more: How Chinese takeaway worker led police to biggest ever Bitcoin seizure
Police believed Qian had left the country, but shortly before Wen was found guilty of money laundering offences in March last year, Detective Constable Joe Ryan detected activity on a cryptocurrency exchange from a wallet linked to Qian, which hadn’t been used since 2019.
The exchange provided details of the account holder – Seng Hok Ling, a Malaysian national with a previous conviction for fraud in Hong Kong in 2015, who was living in Matlock, Derbyshire.
Seng Hok Ling arrives at a rented property. Pic: Met Police
Qian disguises her appearance while on the run. Pic: Met Police
Working on the theory he may be in contact with Qian, detectives stepped up the manhunt, which took them all over the UK, before they identified her at a detached house in a York suburb.
When police kicked open the upstairs bedroom door, there was Qian, lying under a bright red duvet and struggling to put on her top as she stared wide eyed at officers from behind her thick glasses.
Detective Constable Chris Woods told colleagues: “It’s her.”
A ledger and passwords found sewn inside a purpose-made concealed pocket in the jogging bottoms she was wearing, led investigators to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency worth around £67m.
Ling had helped her stay on the run, providing false documents and money laundering services, and renting Airbnb properties, including a house in Glasgow and a remote farmhouse near Loch Tay in the Scottish Highlands.
The court heard he tried to get one passport in the name of dead Hong Kong actress Dianxia Shen.
Staff made to sign confidentiality agreements. Pic: Met Police
A rotating entourage of cooks, drivers and security guards were employed on lucrative contracts to look after Qian, who they assumed was a rich recluse.
They were made to sign strict confidentiality agreements, which barred them from using Chinese devices or apps and photographing, recording or videoing “anyone or anything indoors or outdoors” – with breaches resulting in dismissal and fines of up to $30,000.
Metropolitan Police officers travelled to Beijing and Tianjin to speak to victims of the fraud, some of whom had lost their life savings, seen their family collapse or been left unable to pay for medical care.
Chinese police officers were lined up to become the first in history to give evidence in a UK court, but Qian pleaded guilty on the first day of the trial, while Ling also admitted a money laundering charge.
The court heard that since being in prison Qian has had poetry published and her artwork displayed at an exhibition.
Wen was jailed for six years and eight months last year, and the sentencing of Qian and Ling marks the end of what the Met’s head of economic and cyber crime called “one of the longest running and most complex economic crime investigations” in the force’s history.
“She lived, while she was on the run in the UK, a relatively reclusive lifestyle. She had that entourage of people around her, but she didn’t venture out much,” he said of Qian.
“And we have some understanding from some of her musings and some of thoughts around what she may do with the rest of her money and her wealth and her life ultimately.
“But thankfully, we were able to catch her and bring her to justice before some of those dreams were realised.”
The fortune is now at the centre of a High Court battle between the UK government and thousands of Chinese victims.
Prosecutors have set up a compensation scheme but lawyers representing those who want to recover their investments say it should reflect the huge rise in the value of Bitcoin and not just what they put in.
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