Exit Tory strategy, stage right
Not everything at Labour’s well-choreographed conference went according to plan. Starmer’s vanquishing of the left was underlined when figures like Jeremy Corbyn, who couldn’t bring themselves to directly condemn Hamas, attended the rival World Transformed festival nearby. Holding back the one big announcement – cancelling the Birmingham to Manchester leg of HS2 – until his closing speech meant that there was a vacuum, which was filled by Liz Truss, Nigel Farage, and a lurch to the populist right, including Suella Braverman’s warning about Britain facing a “hurricane” of migrants. He stubbornly refused to live up to the Tories’ caricature of “short-term Starmer” who always “takes the easy way out.” Indeed, Starmer looked more likely to deliver the long-term solutions that Sunak had promised, rejecting “the hope of the easy answer” and choosing “the hope of the hard road”. “We need to focus on making Keir’s five missions tangible, credible and engaging,” said one Starmer ally.
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