2024, year of possible Labor victory: Keir Starmer tries to overcome the apathy of the British

Keir Starmer, the leader of the British opposition whom all polls place in Downing Street at the end of 2024, confesses that what terrifies him most is the “shrug of shoulders” of the voter in front of the ballot box, that is, the generalized idea that all politicians are equal. The question that many Britons are still asking, despite more than 12 years of scandals and ineffectiveness of the Conservatives in power, is: why will Labor be any different?

“The UK is desperately crying out for change. But citizens' trust in politics is so low, it is so degraded, that no one believes it is possible to make a difference,” Starmer admitted this Thursday in his first speech of the year. He chose the headquarters of the National Composites Centre, in Bristol, a research and processing center for advanced composite materials that represents the most technological and industrial face of the United Kingdom. Among robots as a backdrop, the Labor leader tried to construct a speech that was actually a three-ring circus; a criticism of the “cynicism” and “cronyism” of the Westminster political class – the name of the palace where Parliament resides, political jargon refers to the London power bubble far from the rest of the country; a defense of politics as a “public service”, necessary to change the British situation; and a contrast between the legend that attributes effectiveness to the conservatives in managing the economy and the reality of 12 lost years, between Brexit, the pandemic and failed experiments such as the tax cuts of former Prime Minister Liz Truss, which sank the credibility of the United Kingdom.

“What was once his strength is now his weakness. They called themselves the businessmen's party; now they hate them [en referencia al “fuck business!”, ¡que se jodan los empresarios!, que dijo Boris Johnson ante las críticas de la patronal al Brexit]. They boasted about lowering taxes, now we have the highest tax pressure since the Second World War. They boasted about their fiscal responsibility, and almost sank the economy [con el plan fallido de Truss]”Starmer said. “I have read that the conservatives still intend to fight these elections on that ground, convinced that it continues to be their greatest asset (…). We don't just expect the race to revolve around the economy. We want it to revolve around the economy. “We are prepared for battle, and we want to turn the page on all this neoliberal nonsense of recent years,” the Labor leader proclaimed.

“My working hypothesis is that we will have a general election in the second half of this year,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters this Thursday during a visit to the English town of Mansfield. It was the most concrete clue offered to date as to when Britons will be called to the polls.

Election calendar

With the law in hand, the conservatives can hold on to power until January 28, 2025. That would be the deadline to speed up the five-year mandate. In recent months, however, the idea that there would be an advance to spring spread in London political rumor mills. Around May. Starmer demanded that his people have the electoral program ready before February. Sunak now suggests that he prefers to speed up the deadlines a little more, after a year of inflation, flat growth and internal rebellion in the party on the part of the hard wing, dissatisfied with Downing Street's failed policy to control irregular immigration.

“I want to move forward, to straighten out the economy and lower taxes. And also to control irregular immigration and fulfill the commitments made to British citizens,” Sunak defended.

The average of the polls places the Labor Party and its candidate Starmer 18 percentage points ahead of the Conservatives. The advantage has remained unchanged for almost a year, and has managed to spread the idea that the next Government will be left-wing. In 1992, also with a country exhausted after 13 years of Thatcherism, Labor was confident of victory, and the conservative John Major managed to turn the predictions around. It is true that the lead in the polls was narrower than today, but the tories They are now clinging to that last-minute twist, convinced that Starmer remains an unremarkable character for many voters.

The current Labor leader has managed to get rid of all traces of Corbynism over four years. The team around Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labor leader and veteran leftist, has left the scene. Except Starmer himself, who was also part of that praetorian guard that he has managed to get out of the way. His image pleases businessmen. His economic proposals boast responsibility and rigor, to the point of having lowered the ambition of the green plan (more than 32 billion euros promised) to avoid greater debt; or avoiding any commitment to lower taxes, despite constantly criticizing the fiscal pressure of conservative governments.

Ambiguity with immigration

Starmer knows that irregular immigration has become one of the issues that most worries Britons. Labor is very careful not to criticize in humanitarian terms the Sunak Government's plans to deport immigrants to Rwanda. They prefer to focus on criticizing the ineffectiveness of conservatives in tackling the problem. Who was head of the Crown Prosecution Service for years [similar al fiscal general del Estado español]assures that he will be able to put an end to the mafias that traffic people in the English Channel, although he does not rule out the solution of outsourcing the process of welcoming immigrants.

“There is a clear difference between the idea of ​​managing asylum requests in a third country and deporting people to places like Rwanda. It has already been done in some cases, such as with the program to welcome Ukrainian citizens. “I am open to credible solutions to a complex problem, but I defend my central idea that the mafias can be put an end to,” Starmer defended.

There are just a few months left for the Labor leader to finish convincing the British that he is the serious alternative to the decline of the Conservatives, and eliminate the still alive idea that he is a politician who wants to please everyone. and without fully committing to anything.

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