The country feels a little lighter since Starmer decided to step down and Andy Burnham prepares to take over. Keir was frozen, Andy is warm. Keir lacked his own ideas, Andy has a trunkful of those. Keir was on the right of the party, Andy is centre left. He seems genuinely concerned about geographical and class inequality and means to do something about that.
The plans and promises resonate with this lifelong socialist. Old political friends and acquaintances who knew I had given up on Labour ask if this means I will vote for the party again. No, not yet. There are still too many unknowns. And there’s a big piece missing in the policy jigsaw that is being assiduously put together by Burnham and his team.
The unfilled space is foreign policy. He has no experience in this key area. Will he stand up to Trump or submit to him? Will he carry on being robustly pro-European? Most crucially, for me, will he maintain strong support for Israel’s current government, which is seemingly on a mission to obliterate the very idea of Palestine and grab land in Lebanon?
In the local elections, Labour lost four times more voters to the Green Party than to Reform. Zack Polanski is the only British leader to speak publicly and passionately about freeing Palestine from occupation. Polling by Save the Children, Christian Aid and others shows 78 per cent of Labour members want the Government to halt arms exports to Israel. Yet, when Starmer resigned, Gaza was not mentioned by him, or by overheated media analysts and politicians. A vast swell of public opinion was disregarded. I found the silence staggering.
