Labour’s brighton conference shows that starmer still has an uphill struggle  | thearticle

Two words have defined this year’s Labour Party Conference in Brighton so far: “cervix” and “scum”. Significantly, neither came from the lips of the leader. For all his many talents, Sir

Keir Starmer lacks the gift of the gab. Confronted by Andrew Marr with the GCSE biology question of whether it was correct that only women had a cervix, Sir Keir mumbled incoherently: “It is

something that should not be said. It is not right.” He utterly failed in his no doubt sincere attempt to disagree with the MP Rosie Duffield — who has been stigmatised as a “Terf” by trans

militants — while defending her right to speak her mind. Neither his party nor the public were impressed. As for “scum”, his bovver-booted deputy’s preferred term for Tories: all Sir Keir

could do was to wring his hands and shrug his shoulders. Everyone has known that Angela Rayner is beyond his control, ever since he tried to sack her from the Shadow Cabinet and ended up

giving her four different titles.  Yet words do matter in politics. Ms Rayner’s uncouth language may raise a cheer at a fringe meeting in Brighton, but it goes down badly on the doorstep.

Labour’s own polling shows that even in its heartlands, where the Stockport-born Ms Rayner supposedly reigns supreme, such gratuitous insults are a turn-off. It’s certainly not the way to

win back those former supporters who voted Tory for the first time in 2019. The “Angela fringe” may be a thing in some hairdressers, as the _Times _columnist Alice Thomson assures us (behind

a paywall), but more than half the country has no idea who she is and cares even less. In so far as they notice Labour at all, the common response is a wry: “Same old, same old.” Indeed, it

is mainly the metropolitan media that relishes the raucous rhetoric championed by the Angela fringe. You need to be expensively educated not to see it as a blatant attempt to sabotage

Starmer’s attempt to rebrand Labour as a centrist party of government. Class warfare is only really popular with the chattering classes. Today Sir Keir has a rare opportunity to grab the

nation’s attention and change the depressingly negative image of his party. In his speech today, he will insist that Labour is “back in business”, promising that the next manifesto (unlike

Jeremy Corbyn’s) would be “a serious plan for government”. Its focus would be on delivering “a strong economy”. He told Laura Kuennsberg of the BBC that his sole aim was to win the next

election. These are all sensible things for a Labour leader to say. Sir Keir deserves credit for taking a stand against the hard Left, particularly on anti-Semitism. During the Corbyn era he

earned bitter reproaches from Jewish colleagues for his failure to speak out more vigorously against their persecution, but he has atoned for this as leader by purging the persecutors. A

symbol of his success is the fact that Dame Louise Ellman, the distinguished Jewish parliamentarian who resigned over this toxic issue two years ago, rejoined Labour this week.  But before

he can write the next election manifesto in two or three years’ time, Sir Keir must first see off a possible challenge to his leadership. The threat comes not only from the Left, now led by

Ms Rayner. A more formidable rival is Andy Burnham. As a former Cabinet minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the Metropolitan Mayor of Manchester has far more experience of government

than Sir Keir. He has turned the Northern Powerhouse into his power base — even more powerful than Starmer’s North London one. The shamelessly populist Burnham appears to connect with

voters more easily than the former Director of Public Prosecutions. Then there is Sadiq Khan. The London Mayor tends to be underestimated, because he lacks charisma and his record is

undistinguished. Yet last May he won re-election (unlike, as he gleefully points out, his most famous critic, Donald Trump). In a party which claims to represent minorities, but which has

never even been led by a woman, Khan’s Islamic and ethnic credentials are an asset. Given that four of the last five Labour leaders have been white, middle-class men from Islington and

Primrose Hill, a Muslim from Tooting would make quite a change. Neither of the mayors has directly challenged Starmer, but both have been on manoeuvres. Despite being fellow members of the

soft Left, they both refused to endorse the rule changes proposed by the leader to prevent another Corbyn-style coup. While Starmer sweats it out in Brighton, Khan has been telling the

_Daily Telegraph _(of all papers) that he requires a team of 15 police officers to give him round-the-clock protection “because of the colour of my skin and the God I worship”. No doubt Sir

Keir will have appreciated this helpful reminder to disgruntled Labour activists who love identity politics that they have at least one alternative leader-in-waiting. Though they would never

dream of saying so, both Khan and Burnham are well aware that they aspire to follow in the footsteps of another elected mayor who went on to even greater things: Boris Johnson himself. At

this point in the electoral cycle, opposition parties usually enjoy a solid lead in the polls. But these are not normal times: Labour has only just overtaken the Conservatives by a narrow

margin, mainly due to the proposed hike in National Insurance. The fuel crisis may give the Opposition a temporary boost, but next week’s Tory conference and next month’s climate summit in

Glasgow could well restore the Government’s fortunes. The uphill journey facing the Labour leader and his small band of loyalists looks daunting. Today’s speech is an important step forward,

but Sir Keir Starmer is still only in the foothills of the mountain he has to climb. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have

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