Can Keir Starmer give Britain the change it desperately wants?
As Britain edges closer toward its general election on July 4, the polls tell the same story they have for most of the past three years: This is a country screaming out for change.
The situation has been dire for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak since he took office in late 2022. His governing Conservative Party – whose 14 years in power have been defined by the political gambles of austerity, Brexit and radical economics – fell behind the opposition Labour Party in the polls around November 2021, and the gap has only widened since.
Barring a major shock, Labour leader Keir Starmer will be the person walking through the famous black door of 10 Downing Street in less than three weeks’ time.
Starmer has promised to be the agent of change that Britain needs. He has pledged to grow the country’s economy by reforming planning laws and investing in a new industrial strategy. He has said he will set up a national wealth fund with £7.3 billion ($9.3bn) of public money that will help pay for the transition to net zero emissions.
An £8.3bn publicly-owned energy company, Great British Energy, will see the United Kingdom’s energy grid decarbonized by 2030. Starmer says all this can be achieved without raising income taxes, though there are no commitments on other levies, such as capital gains tax, which is paid on money made from selling assets, including property and shares.
The rest of the Labour manifesto combines a mix of modest centrism mixed with soft socialism. It includes imposing taxes on private schools to help pay for state education and windfall levies on energy companies to fund the transition to clean energy. There are also commitments on workers’ rights, cutting waiting lists for health care and also controlling immigration.
Critics on the right say that Starmer will need to raise taxes to fund his plans, while skeptics on the left say his manifesto is not bold or ambitious enough to change Britain for the better.
This is a Britain, of course, that has had record-high inflation over the past two years, watched interest rates skyrocket, seen the pound sink to a record low against the dollar, is still in a cost-of-living crisis, has had the longest waiting times for medical operations in recent history and has spent the past eight years in political turmoil following the 2016 vote to leave the European Union.
In short, this is a long list of things to sort out in a five-year term when public finances are in disarray. The question for Starmer, should he win, is whether the mess is too big for him to fix and whether he has the political skill to bring about the change he has promised.
Who is Keir Starmer?
On paper, the 61-year-old Starmer looks like a classic establishment figure.
Once a leading human rights lawyer, he became Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in 2008, running the Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales – a high-profile job for which he was knighted, making him the first ever Labour leader to enter the job with the prefix Sir to their name.
Starmer, however, is - by the standards of modern political leaders - from relatively humble beginnings.
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