#keir-starmer

#keir-starmer

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Pressure is mounting on Keir Starmer not to cut the UK's contribution to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria after polling found 62% of Britons believe the government should maintain or increase its support. The prime minister must decide this year whether to maintain the UK contribution at 1bn or implement a cut in line with recent reductions to the aid budget. A cut of 20% has been rumoured.

This was their moment to take centre stage. When they could bathe in their own importance. When they could believe that they and national security were one and the same thing. There again, whatever Starmer had put into the public domain would never have been enough. Even a letter from the director of public prosecutions (DPP), Stephen Parkinson, falling on his sword and admitting he had taken his eye off the ball, would have been dismissed as irrelevant.

Of course, Kemi might argue that she has proved the doubters wrong. She has become leader of the Tory party, after all. Though that's not the job it used to be. A small party becoming ever smaller. Where no sensible person really wants to be leader anyway. But credit where credit's due Kemi is the living embodiment of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

In his book about working as Tony Blair's chief of staff in No 10, Jonathan Powell warned of the danger leaders surrounding themselves with flatterers and yes-men. He quoted the Italian philosopher of power Niccolo Machiavelli on how it was one error into which princes are apt to fall because men take such pleasure in their own concerns, and so deceive themselves with regard to them.

Keir Starmer saved his best for the fragile circumstances of a difficult Labour conference. It may not yet be enough to save him. All the same, this was by some way Starmer's most effective and certainly his most interesting conference speech since becoming Labour leader five years ago. Not a particularly high bar, it must be admitted, since Starmer is no great orator but at least the bar is one that he cleared. In the dire situation now facing Labour, this mattered a lot.

My mum was very ill and she couldn't move around any more, he said. She, by the end of her life, had her leg amputated and she could barely communicate. She was very, very ill. She loved her donkeys and I wanted her to be able to see her donkeys. I bought a field for 20,000 at the back of their house. I said, here's your field. It's yours for as long as you may live.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.

Just what has Stephen Doughty done to upset Keir Starmer? Are there no limits to the prime minister's contempt and hatred? Not that Steve is a total nobody. He's not a run-of-the-mill backbencher. But he has risen as high as he is likely to go as a junior minister in the Foreign Office. Probably higher than Steve ever expected. Certainly higher than his mates expected. Put simply, Steve is a dependable plodder.