Sir Keir Starmer may have launched in Scotland, but he needs to keep his base

Published

3 weeks ago

May 25, 2024

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Sir Keir Starmer’s tour of key battlegrounds kicked off in Scotland on Friday. His message was singular: change. And his target was singular, too: take out the SNP.

In four elections on the bounce, Labour has been nearly wiped out in Scotland by the SNP. In 2019, the party returned one MP to Westminster from Scotland. It now has two. The task in this election campaign is to turn that into dozens.

“This is an election about change, and Scotland’s voice is vital. It needs to be a leading voice,” he said in a slick campaign event with hundreds of people holding up “change” placards and cheering Sir Keir and Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar on.

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“Send a message, send a message: that is the height of the SNP’s ambition, to send a message of protest to Westminster. I don’t want Scotland to send a message. I want Scotland to send a government. A Labour government.”

Ask Labour strategists, and they say Scotland is vital to get Labour over the line to a majority because of how far behind Labour were in England back in 2019. They are operating a twin attack on two failing governments – the SNP one in Holyrood and the Conservative government in Westminster – to implore voters to switch back from the SNP to kick the Tories out.

Starmer told me in Glasgow that winning in Scotland was important numerically but also to him personally, because he wants to be a prime minister, should Labour win, that governs for the whole of the UK.

He has been emphatic that there will be no deal with the SNP, whatever the outcome of this general election, to hammer home the point that if Scots want to be rid of the Conservatives they have to vote Labour in.

But in truth, it is not true that Labour need to win big in Scotland to win a general election.

Yes, since the 1950s, Labour hasn’t formed a majority with fewer than 40 seats in Scotland, but Tony Blair actually had a majority in 1997 on seats won in England alone.

To put it into context, there are 91 parliamentary constituencies in the South East of England and 59 in Scotland.

When the country moves against a government – like the polls are suggesting is happening now – and Labour are doing well in local elections in battlegrounds across England, they should be able to hit a majority without needing a huge amount of the 59 out of 650 parliamentary seats in Scotland.

It is, if you like, a version of Project Fear, as Labour try to sell to the Scots that a vote for the SNP is a vote to keep a Conservative government in.

But there is also a sense – and this is where Starmer has got lucky after 14 years of SNP dominance – that the travails of the SNP, which has been embroiled in scandal around former leader Nicola Sturgeon and her husband, Peter Murrell, the former chief executive of the SNP, and a leadership crisis, has finally given Labour an open goal to win back Scottish voters that turned away from a Labour Party that had for too long taken Scotland for granted.

But as Starmer looks to steal votes from the SNP, with Scotland a key battleground, there are fault lines in this election too for the Labour leader among his base that will emerge as a big theme of this election. As we look at geographical battlegrounds – be that Scotland, the Red Wall across parts of the Midlands, the North East and North West, or the Blue Wall in pockets of the south – there are also demographic divisions emerging. And the schism between Sir Keir Starmer and Labour-voting Muslim communities over the Israel-Hamas war is perhaps one of the most salient going into this general election, with prominent MPs from Jess Phillips to Shabana Mahmood and Wes Streeting facing challenges in their constituencies.

I asked Starmer about this on our second tour stop of the day, when he travelled to South Ribble – a Labour target that switched to Labour in 1997 only to return to the Tories in 2010 – to address building depot workers.

He said, in the wake of the West Midlands mayoral victory by a whisker, that he had listened to voters (the independent candidate in this race took tens of thousands of votes from Labour).

And he left me thinking that while he has a clear message to sell to voters in Scotland, to those who feel let down by Labour, he hasn’t got the answer.

He told me there “needs to be a ceasefire straight away” and more humanitarian aid and “the beginning of a process to a two-state solution, including recognition of Palestine” but demurred from committing to formally recognising the Palestine state in its own right, as Ireland, Norway and Spain have done in recent weeks, saying that policy was to recognise Palestine as part of a two-state solution and that “it was only going to happen if we work with our partners on it”.

The US, UK and other Western countries have backed the idea of an independent Palestine existing alongside Israel, but insists statehood should come as part of a negotiated settlement.

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Starmer is at pains not to diverge from the US and other close allies as he eyes Downing Street.

But there is a cost to him when it comes to some of his traditional voters. His majority doesn’t just rest in the marginals, he has to secure his base too.

Politics

Nigel Farage to launch ‘contract with the people’ in Wales following poll boosts

Published

2 hours ago

June 17, 2024

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Nigel Farage to launch 'contract with the people' in Wales following poll boosts

Nigel Farage will kick off Reform UK’s policies in South Wales on Monday, where he is poised to put pressure on the Tories over immigration and tax.

The Reform leader will launch his party’s “contract with the people” – which they will not call a manifesto – in Merthyr Tydfil to highlight “what happens to a country when Labour is in charge”.

The Senedd in Cardiff is the devolved legislature of Wales and is currently run by a Labour-administration.

The launch will follow a productive few days for Reform that saw his party overtake the Conservatives for the first time – prompting Mr Farage to declare his party the “opposition” to Labour.

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His fortunes increased further after another poll by Survation for The Sunday Times showed the Tories could be reduced to just 72 seats in the next parliament, while a separate survey by Savanta for The Sunday Telegraph showed Reform up another three points.

Reform has consistently pushed the Conservatives to adopt a more hardline stance on immigration and tax cuts.

In a flavour of the policies that will be unveiled tomorrow, the party said earlier this month that it would like to see a tax on businesses who employ overseas workers.

This would see firms pay a higher 20% rate of national insurance for foreign workers, up from the current 13.8%.

Reform is also opposed to Labour’s plans to end private school tax exemptions, and wants the UK to leave the European Convention on Human Rights, overseen by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, in order to use offshore processing centres for illegal immigrants and prevent them from claiming asylum.

Some Tory candidates and former MPs on the right of the party have been agitating for Mr Sunak to advocate for an exit from the ECHR – something he has been reluctant to do but has left the door open to.

Other Reform policies include offering vouchers to go private if you can’t see a GP in three days, scrapping interest on student loans, increasing police numbers, keeping “woke ideologies out of the classroom”, abolishing the TV licence fee, reforming the Lords and reducing “wasteful spending”.

Mr Farage used an article in The Sunday Telegraph to criticise Lord Cameron, the foreign secretary, for an interview he gave to The Times on Friday in which he urged voters to reject the Reform leader’s “inflammatory language” and “dog whistle” politics.

In response, Mr Farage wrote: “If Lord Cameron is worried about damaging divisions, he should look a bit closer to home.

“The terminally divided Tory party has proved itself incapable of effective government over the past 14 years – and is set to be even more hopelessly split in opposition, after it gets hammered on 4 July.”

The Reform leader will also turn his fire on Labour, saying he had chosen Wales to launch his “contract with the people” “because it shows everyone exactly what happens to a country when Labour is in charge”.

“Schools are worse than in England, NHS waiting lists are longer than in England, COVID restrictions were even tighter than in England and now Welsh motorists are being soaked by literally hundreds of speed cameras to enforce the deeply unpopular new 20mph blanket speed limit in towns and villages,” he said.

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“Meanwhile, the Tories have been the official opposition almost solidly since 2016 and have achieved zilch, which probably explains why we are neck-and-neck with them in the polls in Wales.

“So, if you want a picture of what the whole country will be like with a Starmer government and a feeble Conservative opposition, come to Wales and then hear us unveil a better future for all of Britain”.

Rishi Sunak has repeatedly said a vote for Mr Farage’s party amounted to handing a “blank cheque” to Labour, whom the polls predict will form the next government from 4 July.

The full list of candidates standing in Merthyr Tydfil and Aberdare are:

Workers Party of Britain – Anthony Cole
Communist Party of Britain – Bob Davenport
Independent – Lorenzo de Gregori
Green Party – David Griffin
Conservative Party – Amanda Jenner
Labour Party – Gerald Jones
Liberal Democrats – Jade Smith
Reform UK – Gareth Thomas
Plaid Cymru – Francis Whitefoot

Politics

Two-child cap to hit extra 670,000 children in next five years, thinktank warns

Published

3 hours ago

June 16, 2024

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Two-child cap to hit extra 670,000 children in next five years, thinktank warns

An extra 250,000 children will be hit by the two-child benefit cap next year, rising to an extra half a million by 2029, a leading thinktank has warned.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the number of children who will fall under the cap – which limits child benefits for the first two children in most households – will reach 670,000 by the end of the next parliament if the policy is not reformed.

The two-child benefit cap, which restricts Child Tax Credit and Universal Credit to the first two children, was brought in by the Conservative government in 2017.

Campaigners have long called for it to be abolished on the grounds it would lift thousands of children out of poverty.

It comes as a separate study from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) found 40% of people who work in primary schools and GP surgeries have considered quitting their job because of a “shameful” level of hardship among the population.

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The JRF found the service providers were “staggering under the weight of hardship” by having to provide extra support to the nearly four million people struggling to pay for essentials including food, heating and clothing.

The IFS said the two-child cap has helped drive up the share of children in large families who are in relative poverty from 35% in 2014-15 to 46% in 2022 – a period when poverty for families with one or two children fell.

The Labour Party has faced pressure to drop the cap – including from former prime minister Gordon Brown – but has so far refused to commit to ending it, citing the current state of the country’s finances.

The pressure intensified further after figures on the right, including former home secretary Suella Braverman and Reform leader Nigel Farage, both called for the cap to be scrapped.

Abolishing the cap does not appear in either the Tory or Labour manifestos, with only the Green Party and Liberal Democrats making the commitment in their offers to the public.

The IFS said removing the cost of the limit would cost the government about £3.4bn a year, equivalent to freezing fuel duties for the next parliament.

The limit currently affects two million children and more children are added each year because it applies to those born after 5 April 2017.

The IFS said when fully rolled out, the cap will affect one in five children, rising to 38% of those in the poorest fifth of households.

It said 43% of children in households with at least one person of Bangladeshi or Pakistani origin will be affected, while those who fall under it on average will lose £4,300 per year – representing 10% of their income.

IFS research economist Eduin Latimer said: “The two-child limit is one of the most significant welfare cuts since 2010 and, unlike many of those cuts, it becomes more important each year as it is rolled out to more families.”

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Mubin Haq, chief executive of the abrdn Financial Fairness Trust, which funded the research, said: “The limit has been a significant contributor to child poverty amongst large families during a period when poverty for families with one or two children fell.

“If the next government is serious about tackling child poverty, it will need to review the two-child limit.”

Alison Garnham, the chief executive of Child Poverty Action Group, said the “biggest driver” of child poverty in the UK was the two-child limit.

“Any government serious about making things better for the next generation will have to scrap the two-child limit, and do so quickly.”

A Labour spokesperson said: “We are under no illusions about the scale of the task ahead if we win the election.

“Labour has already set out how we would make a start, with free breakfast clubs in every primary school, cutting fuel poverty and bringing down energy bills, banning exploitative zero hours contracts, making work pay, ending no-fault evictions and creating more good jobs right across the country.”

Politics

General election: In the marginal seat of North East Fife, it’s all to play for

Published

5 hours ago

June 16, 2024

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General election: In the marginal seat of North East Fife, it's all to play for

In the marginal seat of North East Fife in this election, it is not a straight fight between red and blue, but shades of yellow too.

In 2017, the SNP won here by just two votes ahead of the Scottish Liberal Democrats. That astonishing two-vote tipping point made it the UK’s most marginal seat at the time.

But in 2019, the Lib Dems won it from the SNP, giving the party one of its four MPs in Scotland.

Today, Lib Dem posters line the winding road that takes you to Anstruther’s waterfront.

It’s a charming fishing village and overlooking the harbour are quaint restaurants and gift shops – handmade soap, whisky and fresh fish – it’s all on offer.

With this allure comes a melee of tourists who join us as we hop to each business, talking to them about how the campaigns have resonated with them here.

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“The tourists are a big part of this area for us,” says Tom Cooper, who’s owned his whisky gift shop for over six years.

He’s even had a few celebrities pop by.

“We get up to eight to nine tourist buses each day in the summer, if we didn’t have that, we wouldn’t survive,” he adds.

He loves having them dropped off outside his door, but the tourist season isn’t long enough to make the off-season easier.

“When it’s very, very quiet, you’re talking maybe four months of the year with maybe a six or seven hours a day, that you’re not doing very much. And you can’t really drag people in the door.

“We need to bring people in. The villages needs money. You know, that’s that’s where the economy lies, I think, in the future.”

And when at the ballot box, Tom says it’ll be his shop at the forefront of his mind.

“I look for somebody that’s going to help businesses like myself, small businesses, and keep the high streets going, get people out,” he says.

This is one of the constituencies to have had its boundary lines redrawn.

Changes have now led to areas with higher levels of deprivation being added to the North East Fife seat.

Away from the picturesque coastline, further inland there are signs of a lack of investment and care.

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Glenrothes shopping centre stands partially derelict.

“That’s been like that for about six years,” someone comments, as we look on at the peeling sides of a building and faded shop signage.

This constituency has one of the highest levels of child poverty.

“People are struggling, there are a lot of people not in work,” Chris Lewis, a business owner, tells us.

Chris runs an ice cream parlour, fish and chip bar and waterfront restaurant.

“Employment is what I care about, we need to lift people back to work on a decent wage,” he says.

“I would like to see everybody getting a job, then everybody could work hard and get people off benefits.”

Chris says he has been burnt by past promises.

“This area – whether Lib Dem and SNP – to me it seems they never seem to deliver.”

Chris adds: “There’s just so many promises and you think, you’ve had your time, can someone else do more for the country. We’re a very tourist-heavy area and we can’t afford to lose that. If Scotland loses its attraction, you know, we failed.”

The national narrative and the polls are having an impact on how he is feeling.

“I never thought I’d say it, but Labour are coming to mind, I think they’re going to do more for the country than the others.

“But who do you believe? There’s always promises. And when it comes down to how many are delivered, usually very few.”

We’ve met those across this constituency who intend to back Reform, SNP and Labour throughout the day.

A sign that even the most seemingly straightforward of seats is all to play for.

The list of candidates standing in North East Fife are: