Posts Tagged ‘Uncuts 2024’

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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The Uncuts: 2024 political awards Part II – Rising star of the year: Josh MacAlister MP

31/12/2024, 04:08:33 PM

Rising Star – Josh MacAlister MP

The Conservative victory in the 2017 Copeland by-election was a harbinger of the red wall collapsing in the 2019 general election. At that general election, all Cumbrian seats turned Tory – except Liberal Democrat Tim Farron’s seat. By the time of the 2024 general election, the most Labour parts of Copeland had merged with the most Labour parts of Workington to form a safely Labour seat called Whitehaven and Workington.

This new seat was won by Josh MacAlister, as all other Cumbrian seats also turned from blue to red – with the continued exception of Farron’s. Two of these victories (Michelle Scrogham in Barrow and Julie Minns in Carlisle) returned to Labour seats with long histories of Labour support. Another – Markus Campbell-Savours in Penrith and Solway – made the holiday location of Withnail and I a Labour seat for the first time.

MacAlister enjoys the largest majority among these Cumbrian Labour MPs. This firm political foundation combines with a strong CV, including establishing Frontline, a graduate social worker training programme modelled on Teach First, and being appointed by the government in 2020 to chair the Independent Review into Children’s Social Care.

“The new government has announced they plan to implement a lot of (the recommendations of this Review),” MacAlister recently told The Big Issue. “What is really encouraging is that the issue is clearly seen as a priority for the government. Prime minister Keir Starmer used time in his party conference speech to announce measures to protect care leavers from homelessness. For too long the sector, and the children and families relying on it, has been overlooked.” MacAlister also sought to help children with a Private Members Bill that will protect them “from the harms that can be caused by excessive screen time, and the use of social media”.

An unusually large number of newly elected MPs were immediately appointed to ministerial roles in 2024 (Alistair Carns, Miatta Fahnbulleh, Georgia Gould, Kirsty McNeill, and Sarah Sackman). Lucy Rigby was elected in July and became Solicitor General in December. Undoubtedly, these are the rising stars of the Starmer era.

There remains much ability among newly elected MPs that has yet to be rewarded with ministerial appointment. Many egos will need to be managed to ensure a harmonious PLP. One of the foremost among these talents is our rising star, Josh MacAlister. Like many who have achieved promotion under Starmer, MacAlister benefits from a clear area of specialism and professional expertise. If these virtues can be successfully applied, there should be no danger of Cumbria turning blue again.

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The Uncuts: 2024 political awards Part I – Politician of the year: Keir Starmer

31/12/2024, 02:21:33 PM

Politician of the year: Keir Starmer

Obviously its Keir Starmer. The man just led Labour back to government with an eye-wateringly large majority. Who else could it be?

But there are layers to Keir Starmer being Uncut’s politician of the year. Yes, the achievements demand recognition. Perhaps more interesting though is how this politician continues to baffle and confound Westminster.

Here is a post by John Rentoul from Sunday 29th December, quoting Tim Shipman’s intro in his piece in the Sunday Times. It’s extremely well written and smart intro, perfectly encapsulating the current conventional wisdom on Keir Starmer, the extent to which he is serially misread and why his success will continue to surprise.

There’s nothing factually wrong or incorrect but two issues show how the gaze of the cognoscenti is in the wrong place.

First, there’s the focus on the immediate with the emphasis on the government’s day to day travails. Labour has a near impregnable majority, no election due for several years and a very recent general election where pollsters were, to put it politely, all over the place. But somehow snapshot polls and the horse-race lens still dominate reporting. There’s lots that’s negative that could be written that is material to understanding Keir Starmer’s position, but it would be about policy travails not who’s up or who’s down. The mirroring of Sunak and Starmer in the intro is neat but their respective positions, Sunak at the end of a difficult parliament with an evaporating majority and Starmer at the start of a parliament with a huge majority, could not be more different.

Second, there’s the appearance of Nigel Farage. With his quips and accompanying online malestrom, Farage is Westminster’s ideal of a politician. Yet while he did present a threat from the right to Sunak, he was quite the reverse for Keir Starmer, making a significant contribution to Labour’s majority by splitting the Tory vote. However, the framing is of Farage chasing down Starmer as he did Sunak. Once again there are plenty of threats to Labour, more relevant than Farage. For example, what about the Greens, they have almost the same number of MPs as Reform and actually took seats that were Labour targets.

Beyond the headline achievements, Keir Starmer is Uncut’s politician of the year because of how he has got to the top of the greasy pole: he is not of Westminster, he doesn’t do what’s expected, he doesn’t play the game, he rarely chases headlines, he isn’t attentive to the lobby and commentariat, but yet…he sits atop the biggest Labour majority in decades and has bent Westminster to his will.

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