UNCUT: A boosted Starmer, but he’s still haunted by Burnham and Farage

04/10/2025, 01:26:56 AM

The Labour Party conference fulfilled its time-honoured purpose of providing respite for a beleaguered prime minister, assailed by the vicissitudes of government and the inveterate scheming of colleagues. This is an audience willing its leader on. A useful corrective to the Whitehall slog and the sniping of the Westminster village.

At conference everything is washed clean. At least for a few days. Unity was the vibe, with Keir Starmer greeted by thunderous applause in the hall from delegates as he rattled off a list of the party’s overlooked achievements in government, while he socked it to Nigel Farage. There is no mood in the activist base for a change in leader and the novelty of being in government again after 14 long years in the wilderness has still not worn off.

Not yet.

Will it last, that’s the question. It’s clear that what was true before the conference is still true after it. The country is in turmoil; the product of a general dissatisfaction with Red/Blue politics, but this is overlaid by a stubbornly unresolvable cost-of-living crisis, barely functioning public services, the highest tax-take any of us has known and an all-pervading sense of national decline. Throw in the early manoeuvrings of World War Three and it’s a challenging in-tray for Keir Starmer, to put it mildly.

He might consider the past 12 months have been arduous, but the next year will be worse. A difficult Budget at the end of November and a potentially disastrous set of elections next May could undo this week’s positivity and with it his tenure in Downing Street.

Ministers are plainly rolling the pitch for more tax rises – skating perilously close to their pre-election promises not to raise income tax and VAT – as they seek to plug the hole in the public finances, unable, as they would have preferred, to trim the welfare bill.

And polls point to a devastating set of results in the spring, with Labour in Wales trailing in third place ahead of the all-out assembly elections, while the SNP rides high in Scotland and Reform is set to rampage through Labour’s English local government strongholds.

And then there’s Andy…

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UNCUT: Our paradox PM needs to show us he has the stuff

29/09/2025, 08:50:06 PM

Who is Keir Starmer? I mean, who is he really? A year of more into office, propelled into Downing Street with an enormous 170-seat Commons majority, our chameleon PM remains elusive. Unknowable.

His father was a toolmaker, apparently. But what does he want? Whose side is he on? Are there particular passions that drive him? What is he for?

Our Prime Minister: the walking paradox.

The human rights lawyer who wants to die on a hill over compulsory identity cards. The north London liberal who has gutted the overseas aid budget. The barrister – a King’s Counsel no less – who can only manage faltering performances in the House of Commons.

The man who told us Britian had become a ‘nation of strangers’ because of excessive immigration, only to disown his remarks weeks later. The election winner with personal ratings that are now through the floor (who, in any case, managed to win half a million votes fewer than Jeremy Corbyn did in 2019).

While his army of restless and underworked backbenchers are now plotting against the man responsible for putting them on the green leather benches in the first place.

Governing is hard, it turns out.

Yet Starmer could have made things easier on himself. For a start, the government’s communications have been shambolic – not helped by the general absence of political strategy since entering Downing Street and a revolving door of often sup-par backroom staff.

And who would have thought a PM with a 170-majority would struggle to get tricky proposals through parliament? But he’s managed it with the fiasco over the proposed welfare cuts – which are set to cost more!

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UNCUT: Burnham’s 2015 defeat was Labour’s ‘sliding doors’ moment

12/09/2025, 08:00:35 AM

September 12, 2025.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham is celebrating his tenth anniversary as Labour leader, with speculation growing that he intends to bow out of British politics.

After eight years in Downing Street, he is rumoured to be the favourite to become president of the European Commission, bringing senior-level political clout but a low-key style to the EU’s fractious relationship with the Trump administration.

A committed pro-European, Burnham was widely credited with a successful intervention during the Brexit referendum campaign helping to keep Britain in the European Union.

He subsequently beat Theresa May in the snap general election of 2017, following the Tory party’s implosion over the Brexit result, which forced the resignation of David Cameron as prime minister.

After convincing Germany of the need to tighten borders and limit immigration into Britain with a mixture of charm and quiet tenacity, Burnham won a second term in May 2021.

His widely admired leadership through the Covid pandemic – an empathetic style and consensual approach – were considered to have brought the country together…

Okay, enough hagiography, but the serious point is that Labour politics is full of ‘sliding doors’ moments; counterfactuals and credible what-might-have-beens.

Think how differently our political history might look if Roy Jenkins had won the leadership in 1976, or if Tony Benn had pipped Denis Healey in the 1981 deputy’s race. The 2015 leadership election – ten years ago today – being another case in point.

The race to succeed the defeated Ed Miliband following the 2015 general election seemed to be Burnham’s for the taking: Similar soft-left politics to Miliband but with sharper political skills, he represented a software upgrade but with no danger of downloading Blairite malware.

As we know, ‘twas not to be.

Miliband’s decision to soften party membership rules allowed hundreds of thousands to join the party for £3 – many maliciously – just to vote for Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership contest.

Having started as little more than the left’s dutiful standard-bearer, Corbyn’s new army of supporters propelled him to victory – gobbling-up three-fifths of the vote – with Burnham edging Yvette Cooper for second place (19/17%), while full-fat Blairite, Liz Kendall, was left trailing with just 4% of the vote.

The rest of the tale is familiar enough.

The wild oscillations in Labour’s fortunes over the past decade – swirling from the Corbynite hard left to the Starmerite right – hitting rock bottom in the 2019 election, only to bounce back with the thumping 170-majority just five years later – are head-spinning.

A decidedly less dramatic and certainly less traumatic future was available with a Burnham leadership. The prospect of him synthesising the best of the party’s traditions – a Goldilocks politics of modernity with tradition – could have been a winning formula.

A contrast, certainly, to Blairite permanent revolution and Gordon Brown’s listless tenure in Number 10, while being less geeky and more effective than Miliband.

As a politician, Burnham is more reminiscent of John Smith than anyone else. Overwritten by the scale of Blair’s 1997 victory, Smith led Labour for two successful and collegiate years between Neil Kinnock’s agonizing defeat in April 1992 and his own untimely death in May 1994.

Yes, there was less reforming zeal than Blair eventually brought to proceedings, but there was also a remarkable calm. And that mattered. Ideological battles were avoided with Smith’s successful performances doing much to lift the spirits of a demoralised party and set it up for eventual victory in 1997.

So here we are a decade later; a lost decade at that. Yet rather than bowing out, Burnham remains the prince across the water. Well, across the Manchester Ship Canal at any rate.

The ever-watchful, ever-ready ‘King of the North’ and one of the few Labour politicians of his generation with a record of achievement to point to, transforming the fortunes of the Greater Manchester conurbation he has led since 2017 into the fastest-growing city outside London.

Eight years younger than Keir Starmer, Burnham remains positioned as a future leader, despite his two previous tilts at the top job (he also stood in 2010). As of yet he has no sure-fire way back to Westminster. But staying power is the most important attribute in a political career and Burnham has it in abundance.

The obvious counterpoint to Burnham is that you sometimes need to bounce a political party and its activists out of their comfort zone to connect with the wider electorate and he isn’t willing to do that.

Fair enough, but sometimes bringing calm purpose, respecting the various traditions, having a decent track record and, yes, being a nice bloke is enough.

And all that was available to Labour a decade ago.

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UNCUT: Pick someone outside the bubble for deputy leader

05/09/2025, 10:21:43 PM

Choosing Labour’s next deputy leader shouldn’t be a cabinet beauty contest, with token representation from the party’s Left. In fact, Labour’s next deputy leader should not be an MP at all.

Its time the rulebook was changed and figures from outside the Parliamentary Labour Party were able to stand for the deputy’s role.

Helpfully the annual conference in Liverpool is three weeks away, providing the perfect opportunity to do just that.

Labour’s General Secretary, Hollie Ridley, has rightly warned about navel-gazing, reminding the party that the contest to find the party’s 19th deputy leader should be conducted ‘in a manner that befits the party of government.’

That’s code for keep it cheap and quick, but it’s also a chance to hold a meaningful election without disrupting ministerial business.

Indeed, the party’s internal workings are not keeping pace with the government’s own agenda.

One of Angela Rayner’s final acts in government was to publish the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, which aims to ‘permanently change the balance of power’ between centre and provinces towards the latter, as she put it in her resignation letter.

Limiting the process to candidates outside the cabinet would amplify Labour as a party for the whole country and show it really is serious about devolution.

And it’s not like there’s a shortage of talented applicants out there.

A poll of party members by Survation/LabourList found that Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, was comfortably ahead of any other party figure as a potential successor to Keir Starmer. (Ironically, Angela Rayner was second).

Another recent poll from YouGov saw party veteran David Blunkett come top in the public popularity stakes.

Would either Blunkett or Burnham – or other Labour Mayors like Claire Ward or Tracey Brabin – not be a suitable fit?

Or for that matter Eluned Morgan, the Welsh First Minister? Or Sir Steve Houghton, leader of Barnsley Council and one of the most respected figures in local government?

Rather than a troupe of busy cabinet ministers taking bites at each other, with every utterance translated into an attack on the government, undermining cabinet collective responsibility in the process, would it not be better to leave the stage clear for the party’s stars beyond the Westminster bubble to become deputy leader?

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UNCUT: Angela Rayner is not too big to fail

03/09/2025, 10:27:36 PM

It always seems trite to focus on ‘the optics’ of a political scandal rather than the substance of one, but the swirling row about Angela Rayner’s complex property affairs looks utterly disastrous, both for her and the government of which she is nominally the second-in-charge.

After a week of headlines about her purchase of an £800,000 flat in fashionable Hove – hundreds of miles from her east Manchester parliamentary seat – the Deputy Prime Minister has been forced to concede she had not paid the full amount of stamp duty owed.

Rayner’s much-publicised living arrangements, dividing her time between her central London grace-and-favour flat, her domestic home in Ashton-under-Lyne and her new flat, is given added complexity as she and her ex-husband share caring arrangements for their children, including a disabled son.

Wise, perhaps, for people without disabled children to withhold judgment about people who have – and it is perfectly feasible that Angela Rayner has followed the expert advice she received, which led her to underpay the correct amount of stamp duty, to the letter.

It seems plausible that the government’s standards adviser, Sir Laurie Magnus, might see it that way. But that must be a hope rather than an expectation. For now, Angela Rayner is in big trouble.

She is not just a mother trying to juggle her domestic responsibilities; she is the deputy prime minister in a Labour government. One that presides over a divided, moribund country having won as little as 34% of the popular vote in last year’s general election.

To state the obvious; two-thirds of voters did not back Labour, with the government bequeathed the worst in-tray since Clement Attlee inherited the smoking ruins of post-war Britain.

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UNCUT: Labour slowly turns away from gender ideology, but Scotland continues in its thrall

22/07/2025, 08:17:30 PM

by Rob Marchant

Change happens, to paraphrase Hemingway, gradually and then suddenly. In the wake of April’s historic Supreme Court ruling (that a woman is defined by her biological sex, rather than how (s)he “feels”), it seems the gender ideology edifice is finally starting to crumble, in the UK at least. It cannot crumble soon enough.

Last week, Linzi Smith, supported by the activist group Fair Cop, won her case against Northumbria Police, the judge effectively ruling that their attendance at Pride celebrations – let’s face it, an act which is by no means politically neutral in the current context of Pride – inhibited police impartiality and was therefore “unlawful”.

Surrey County Council also finally agreed no longer to fund tarnished Surrey Pride, after its former leader, Stephen Ireland, was sentenced to 30 years for assorted crimes, including paedophilia relating to a 12 year-old boy (we should note that his colleagues and friends are still in charge of it). It is not, self-evidently, the case that anyone connected with gay or trans rights should be under any particular suspicion of criminal behaviour; simply that, for a few years, we stopped treating those activists as we treat everyone else when it comes to basic safeguarding. We created an “untouchable” class, who were beyond criticism, and paedophiles like Ireland gaining access to children was the tragic result.

The Labour party itself unexpectedly announced on Tuesday that it would no longer allow biological men to stand as women in single-sex categories for electoral representation – a position Uncut argued was madness a good seven years ago – and would return to the simple rule that sex means sex. Alleluia. And it seems unlikely that that move would have happened without Keir Starmer’s blessing.

Labour has still a way to go in terms of all its parliamentary party “getting it” – Jo Bartosch is quite right – but it is also true to say that, amongst those who actually sit within government, it seems pretty unthinkable that they will at this point be allowed to pass any legislation which will “make things worse”. Anneliese Dodds – perhaps the most anti-GC member of Starmer’s initial Cabinet – no longer sits in it. Formerly vocal “be kind” advocate Lisa Nandy, whose support may well have hobbled her leadership chances in 2020 (see Uncut piece from the vault) has gone remarkably quiet on the subject. And Wes Streeting has in recent years made his position on affirmative healthcare and puberty blockers very clear, acting to some extent as Starmer’s lightning rod for criticism from LGBT lobby groups, and others, on the subject.

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UNCUT: The case for hope: Why Keir Starmer’s situation isn’t as bad as reported and Labour victory at the next election is now MORE likely after the past year

04/07/2025, 06:12:01 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Yes, you read those words correctly. Hope. Labour election victory. More likely. The standout moments from the last year might seem like disasters – freebiegate, Winter Fuel Allowance, disability benefits – but away from these high impact political car crashes, the basis of future success is there and currently being largely ignored.

The case for optimism comprises three parts: what actually matters to the public, signs of improvement in these issues and the level of popular expectation of government and politics.

The various political woes that have befallen the government are real. They are largely self-inflicted and they do impact the public’s view of Keir Starmer’s competence. None of this deniable. But in terms of what really matters to voters , there are two preeminent issues: the cost of living and the NHS. The latest release from the Office for National Statistics’ public opinion survey is for May and the cost of living was cited as the most important issue by 86% of respondents, narrowly ahead of the NHS which was selected by 85% of respondents. For comparison, Immigration was at 59%. Wider data suggests that if voters are forced to only pick one issue (multiple issues could be selected in the ONS survey) the cost of living is the highest ranked issue by a wide margin over the NHS.

This is where voters will make a judgement on whether the Labour government has delivered for them. Most of the noise of politics is immaterial to the public. Either there’s good news in these two areas that is felt by voters, in which case, Labour will be well placed (as would any incumbent government) or there is not, and Labour will likely lose.

The evidence is that there has been solid progress on both fronts over the last year. This article by Tom Calver, Data Editor at the Times provides an excellent summary of the reality on the ground: Wages rising ahead of inflation and waiting lists coming down.

Rising wages, falling waiting lists: an unpopular take, but in a few ways, life in Britain has been (slowly) improving over the past year.

But it doesn’t feel that way — and that’s a problem for Labour

Free to read: www.thetimes.com/article/33c0…

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— Tom Calver (@tomcalver.bsky.social) 29 June 2025 at 11:42

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GRASSROOTS: Britain has a Middle East ally that respects religious diversity, has quotas for women in Parliament and a British university in the capital. So why aren’t we doing more to support them?

05/06/2025, 09:05:50 PM

by Toby Bell

Our plane from Istanbul descends, banking to the right. Through the window, I catch glimpses of a built-up city with brightly lit tower blocks and roads lined with Bentleys and Land Cruisers.

On the ground, I found upscale restaurants bordering ornamental fountains and landscaped ponds and five lane highways. In winter, there’s skiing with cable cars; in summer, millions of tourists flock to gorges and picnic spots. The wealth is unmistakable.

The UK maintains close ties. The University of London offers accredited degrees through the British International University set in a striking modern campus. Among them: a fully GMC-recognised medical degree. We’re shown a touchscreen anatomy table that wouldn’t look out of place in a top London hospital.

A High Council for Women is in place, as is a 30% quota for women in its parliament and officials brief us on democratic reforms. Religious diversity is respected under a relatively liberal and pluralistic political system.

At this point, you might think I’m describing Amman or another gulf city. But I’m not. This is Erbil—the capital of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). I visited recently as part of a parliamentary delegation, accompanying John Slinger MP, Chair of the APPG for the Kurdistan Region in Iraq, whom I work for.

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UNCUT: The Uncuts: 2024 political awards Part III – Disappointment of the year: Mayor Sadiq Khan’s lack of solidarity with London’s Jewish community

04/01/2025, 09:30:28 PM

Sadiq Khan – or Sir Sadiq, as we will soon be calling him – has suffered a lot of brickbats during his two-and-a-bit terms in office. Some, like Trump’s criticism, have been playing to the worst, prejudiced instincts of their own bases and should be immediately dismissed.

Others are more justified. For example, what are the great achievements he can point to, after eight years in charge of Britain’s capital? Activists, we can be sure, shuffle awkwardly when asked this on the doorstep. “Not being Boris Johnson” is not that much of an accolade for a politician who has now been hovering at or near the top of politics in Westminster and London for nearly two decades.

For example, in this election year, knife and gun crime was up 20% year on year in his beat, but he got elected anyway. In his role as Greater London’s Police and Crime Commissioner, he has political oversight of the Met. One imagines that that means achieving some key policy goals that matter to Londoners, but these days it all seems to be more about providing officers to support the “LGBTQ+ Community”– an increasingly fractious and disunited “group” these days, in any event – and having police officers dancing at Pride, than tackling actual crime on the streets.

But the biggest oversight in Khan’s oversight is surely the fact that, for the last year and a quarter, there have been pretty much weekly demonstrations, coordinated by the dreadful Palestine Solidarity Campaign: a far-left grouping, often mentioned in dispatches at Uncut over the years for their anti-Jewish sentiment, rather than their standing up for the rights of non-aligned Palestinians.

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UNCUT: In defence of the Labour government’s first few months: A decent start that is underestimated because of endemic political ADHD

02/01/2025, 08:48:23 PM

by Atul Hatwal

Disappointment. That’s the tenor of much commentary about the Labour government’s first few months. Criticism for a lack of radicalism is to be expected from the left but there’s been a chorus from centrist voices. For example, here’s Duncan Robinson from the Economist

Starmer’s Labour as the apogee of “not a good look” thought

www.economist.com/britain/2025…

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— Duncan Robinson  (@duncanrobinson.bsky.social) 2 January 2025 at 09:32


Setting aside gripes from the Socialist Campaign Group that the top 100 companies on the FTSE have not yet been nationalised, there are two elements to the mainstream critique: more could and should have been done on policy, such as tax or planning reform and that there’s a missing vision thing. Underpinning both, on occasion, is a wistful view of how much better things were in 1997 after a few months of Labour government.

Both aspects of criticism have a kernel of truth but are currently being wildly exaggerated while the nostalgia for 1997 is a function of rose-tinted spectacles revealing a grand design that was distinctly absent at the time.

On policy, more can always be done but it is equally important to get it right. The Lansley NHS reforms of the Cameron-Clegg coalition are testament to the dangers of ‘go big or go home’ without having a clear plan. They were an ill thought-out mess which few in the NHS wanted and even fewer defend today.

It was patently obvious that precious little policy had been developed by Labour in opposition and areas like planning and tax are much easier to get wrong than right. If there has been no progress in these areas in the next year then there maybe a better case for complaint. In the interim, since attaining office, there have been plenty of policies that will have long term impact. From employment rights to housing targets to new rules on onshore wind farms, there have been substantive announcements. Combined with action to stop madness such as the Rwanda policy, almost £1bn spent for zero impact, and new funding of the public services in the budget, this is surely a reasonable start.

On the vision thing, more often than not, it is a vibe, retrofitted to government policy based on what has worked. In 1997, there were big immediate achievements like the Minimum Wage, Scottish devolution and independence for the Bank of England but it would be straining credulity to say there was a distinct ideological thread to these moves other than ‘modernisation’ or just ‘making stuff work better’.

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