Labour's Hamilton by-election candidate ‘in it to win it', says Rayner
The Deputy Prime Minister visited the Holyrood constituency to campaign on Thursday, but protesters forced her to change the location of planned media interviews.
Voters go to the polls on June 5 in the by-election in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse constituency, which was called following the death of SNP MSP Christina McKelvie.
SNP leader John Swinney has appealed to Labour supporters to back his party in order to defeat Nigel Farage's Reform.
Scottish Labour's campaign for the seat has also come under scrutiny as candidate Davy Russell refused to take part in a TV debate ahead of the ballot and did not appear on a morning radio show.
Speaking to journalists during her trip, Ms Rayner said Mr Russell is a 'local person who has lived here all his life, he really believes in championing his community'.
Asked about suggestions Labour could finish third behind Reform, she said: 'Davy Russell's in it to win it. He wants to be here, not for the short-term, but he's been serving his community here for 45 years.
'Once the by-election is over, he'll be here still serving his community, that's what this campaign is about, it's a grassroots campaign.'
The Deputy Prime Minister said she has not seen a campaign video by Reform attacking Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar and accusing him of prioritising the Pakistani community.
The online ad – which the SNP and Labour have demanded be removed by Meta – shows clips of Mr Sarwar calling for more representation of Scots with south Asian heritage, although he did not say he would prioritise any one group.
Ms Rayner repeated her attacks on Mr Farage, calling him a 'snake oil salesman that just wants to sow division'.
Reform UK has defended the video and said it was merely highlighting Mr Sarwar's own words.
Asked about the protests which led to her planned media interviews moving locations, Ms Rayner said: 'I know that those protesters are upset about what's happening in the situation in Gaza, and that situation is intolerable, and I completely understand why people are upset about that.'
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12 minutes ago
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Japan ambassador tries Irn-Bru on visit to whisky distillery
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New Statesman
an hour ago
- New Statesman
The British left is coming for the Government
Photo byWhisper it as yet, but after five long years of confusion and disarray, the British left is rallying. Local political organisations are coalescing, from Chiswick to Liverpool to Newcastle. The Green Party leadership contest has become a straight fight between an energetic, 'eco-populist' left candidate, and the party's more cautious establishment. The prize is clear: local elections due next May across England's major cities, including London councils. After that, who knows. Could Labour's urban fiefdoms fall victim to the rout northern councils saw in the local elections last month? It won't be easy. Bitterly, almost viscerally unpopular as Labour may be, it is the self-styled insurgents of Nigel Farage's Reform that have been the overwhelming beneficiaries of the Starmer slump. Farage himself has been happy to pilfer from the left – a long-time Thatcherite now turned improbable friend of the welfare state. 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And fearful of a second Corbyn-style resurrection, Starmer's operation has driven a stake through the left's heart, stuffed its mouth with garlic, placed it in a lead-lined coffin, sealed the tomb, and stationed a grim-faced 24-hour armed guard outside, gripping their pistols and blazing torches. The monster will not now escape. As a political force, the Labour left is finished. The tactic of entryism – entering the Labour party and changing it – is finished too. Instead, the party's steely-eyed Van Helsings should have been looking elsewhere. From the shadows, far away from Westminster, a terrifying new apparition is approaching. Disguised by the size of Labour's majority, the 2024 election saw the non-Labour left win its biggest parliamentary representation in British history, on its biggest vote ever. Four million voters returned nine left MPs, spread between the Greens and five independents, including Jeremy Corbyn in Islington. At the height of its success, in the late 1940s, the Communist Party won two MPs and 94,000 votes. Since the foundation of the Labour Party itself, the non-Labour left has never seen anything like this support. Against a seemingly monolithic Labour majority, this may have mattered little. Britain's perverse voting system found Keir Starmer foisted into Downing Street with a landslide majority, but with half a million fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn lost by in 2019. As a result, the party has been left with more marginal seats than ever before in its history. Fifty-one of its seats were won with a margin of less than 5 per cent. Accurately described after the election by polling expert James Kaganasooriam as a 'sandcastle majority', the turning political tide has now washed away Labour's 2024 support. The main beneficiaries, for now, are Reform, whose spectacular success in the local government elections saw them win control of previously Labour councils from Durham to Derbyshire. Its one-time heartlands in the North of England were already riddled and on the verge collapse, with Boris Johnson's demolition of this so-called 'Red Wall' in 2019 having already delivered the fatal blow. Johnson's failure to hold his new coalition together, coupled with Liz Truss' calamitous 44 days in office, saw many of Johnson's wins fall back into Labour hands five years later – but on the most tenuous and temporary basis. Demographic change, and a great, decades-long shift in the economy from manufacturing to services, has created new heartlands for the party, concentrated in inner cities and major urban areas across the country: a mix of underpaid, insecure younger workers, often with university degrees; more settled ethnic minority communities; and a solid layer of public sector employees, many of whom are now at or approaching retirement. Generally socially liberal, 15 years of persistent economic failure since the financial crisis have shoved this base increasingly to the economic left. And 25 years of failed military interventions have created a deep cynicism about Britain's role abroad – crystallised in the distance between Starmer's government and its voters on Israel. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Even before entering Downing Street, the horrors of Gaza, and Britain's complicity in them, had been a powerful solvent on Labour's new base of support. That undermined Labour's vote in 2024, and resulted in the arrival of the 'Gaza independents', the four pro-Palestinian MPs elected in the strongly Muslim areas of Leicester, Blackburn, Dewsbury and Birmingham. Combined with Labour's blunders and cruelties in office, from the Winter Fuel Payment to disability allowance cuts, the party's support has been hollowed out. 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Cooperation across the non-Labour left is the order of the day. On the ground, this cooperation is already starting to happen. In Lancashire, Greens have banded together with the newly formed Preston Independents to become the official opposition on the County Council. Greens and Independents are working closely in Islington. Local organisations are being pulled together by prominent independent left candidates, like former mayor Jamie Driscoll in Tyneside, Faiza Shaheen in Chingford, and former ANC MP Andrew Feinstein, who came second place in Keir Starmer's own constituency of Holborn and St Pancras at the 2024 election. Green Party members in all those constituencies are working alongside the independent left. Local alliances can become a national force. Across the channel, France's New Popular Front, an alliance between forces of the traditional left, the left populist France Insoumise, and the French Greens, was pulled together in weeks on a radical programme that catapulted the alliance to top of the polls in the snap elections – and pushed Marine Le Pen's National Rally to third place. France Insoumise MP Danielle Obono spoke at the London Green Party's conference last month on the practical experience of unity. There's a desire to learn from what worked – and what did not. The next general election isn't due until 2029. But a string of local council victories next year would pave the way for an unprecedented challenge to Labour – not from the right, as the party has always had to fight, but from its radical flank. And this new movement could take parts of Labour with them: from the tone of his Guardian op-ed on Wednesday, John McDonnell already regards his party as half-lost. 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New Statesman
an hour ago
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The town that loathes Keir Starmer
A boat passes through the northern industrial town of Burnley. Photo by Lancashire Images /Alamy On the shop floor of Burnley's last mill, 28 looms are thrashing away with a dull roar. At modern machines all around this stone factory, workers are diligently constructing the product that turned this town from a backwater into a centre of global capitalism: one man examines a roll of fabric for flaws; behind a glass partition a group of young women are sewing; upstairs others map out new patterns on CAD software. Steven Eastwood, who has driven forklifts around Ashfield Mill for decades, remembers a time when his employer still had local competitors. Now, from a peak of 99,000 looms a little over a century ago, only the weaving machines in this room remain in commercial operation. As Burnley's traditional industry has faded so too has its connection to Labour, its traditional politics. After winning every election here from 1935, the party lost to the Liberal Democrats in 2010, and then the Conservatives in 2019, before narrowly taking back the seat at the last election. Eastwood has voted for Labour his entire life. He says he will continue to do so with an apologetic shrug, as if he can conceive of no possible alternative. But asked what its leader now stands for, he cannot say. Speaking to his aides in opposition, Sir Keir Starmer told them he wanted to be judged by a simple test: in five years time, could he look in the eyes of voters in towns such as Burnley and tell them that Labour had made a genuine difference to their lives? Almost one year after he entered office – according to residents of the town – he appears to be on track to fail. Sitting on a bench inside Charter Walk Shopping Centre, Janine, a supply teacher, is using her half term holiday to people watch on a quiet afternoon. Born locally into a 'very poor working class family' she has been living in Bonn for the last two decades. When she moved back to Burnley recently she was shocked at the area's decline. 'I came back to a society that I could not recognise behaviour wise, attitude wise,' she says. 'I love this town but it's so run down. Betting shops, charity shops, boarded up shops. It breaks my heart.' She estimates her quality of life was 10 times higher in Germany doing the same job. At one school at which she now teaches, 14 and 15-year-olds have the literacy levels of primary school children. At another, a charity had to buy Christmas presents for pupils because their parents could not afford any. 'That was not the case when I was last teaching in the UK,' she says. 'I couldn't believe it.' A former Labour voter, she cannot understand why, in her eyes, the government is determined to penalise those in need of help. 'They're taking the Winter Fuel Allowance away, taking farmers' inheritance from them, they have no plan on illegal immigration and public services are on the floor.' Janine is now convinced the party's core voters will abandon them for Reform. 'I never thought I would say I wouldn't vote Labour but at the last election I voted Green even though I knew they wouldn't win,' she adds. Paul, a bus driver nursing a hot drink nearby, insists he cannot begin to talk about Starmer because his opinions will be unprintable. 'The government is fucking too right wing,' he eventually says. 'They're fucking backwards bastards on everything.' They are targeting people who have worked 'all of their bastard life', he says. 'Even the Conservatives left the Winter Fuel Allowance alone – they knew not to touch the pensioners.' Until last year, Paul had always voted Labour. At the next election he will not turn out at all. 'I don't like Farage, he's too fascist,' he says. 'I don't trust any of them.' When I say that Starmer wants to be able to tell the people of Burnley he has made a genuine difference to their lives, Paul laughs. 'I don't think that whichever government has ever been in they've ever had an impact on my life. You work your arse off all your life and they screw you.' Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Manning the till in a British Heart Foundation shop on Burnley's high street, Amanda says that she also used to support Labour. Now, she believes the party is 'not doing such a good job' in office. 'They've not done what they said they were going to do. Their decisions have been bad,' she says. 'As a person Keir Starmer seems alright. As a politician he's not doing a good job.' Shops are closing in Burnley, but at least it's not as bad as nearby Nelson, another Lancashire mill town, which has now become a 'dump', she claims. 'The government always say they will give us money but we never see any of it, or they spend it on stupid stuff.' At the next election, Amanda plans to vote for the Liberal Democrats or the Greens. 'They seem to believe in their principles more. The Conservatives and Labour have been in power for so long. They always get in so they've become a bit more complacent.' Like many Burnley residents, Afrasiab Anwar was brought up on traditional Labour values. After moving away for university he came back to his hometown in 2002, a year after local race riots saw white men attack takeaways and Asians firebomb a pub. 'It wasn't a place I recognised,' he says now. In an attempt to improve the town, he began working for the local authority before winning election to represent Labour himself and then, in 2021, becoming the council leader. In November 2023, however, when Starmer failed to call for a Gaza ceasefire, he and 10 other Labour representatives quit the party. Anwar's Burnley Independent Group now runs the local authority in coalition with Lib Dem and Green councillors. [See also: Why is Birmingham leading Britain's child poverty spiral?] Sitting in his office within Burnley's grand town hall, he is contemptuous of the government he once wished to see elected. 'It's been a complete letdown in every aspect. There's been nothing for places like Burnley. There's been no additional investment,' he says. 'Traditional Labour voters, what are they getting? Working-class people, what are they getting out of this Labour government? The two child benefit cap, the winter fuel allowance. It's the complete opposite of what a Labour government stands for.' On the doorstep, Anwar claims, voters tell him they did not believe things could decline further after 14 years of austerity. Under Starmer's government, though, 'they think it's far worse'. Burnley has long struggled to manage an uneven transition from the days of King Cotton. In 2019, it was ranked as the eighth most deprived area in England. It has some of the highest rates of fuel poverty, health deprivation and child poverty in the country. At the same time, however, the town has become a centre of high tech manufacturing that has seen it touted as a model for northern revitalisation. Former mills have been turned into campuses for the University of Central Lancashire; local firms engineer ultra-lightweight parts for Airbus planes. Anwar is convinced the old ways of doing politics here are gone: Labour's ties to their core support are irreparably broken. 'People are much cleverer now,' he says. 'They vote for people who they think will represent them, who will be their voice and who are genuinely a part of the town, a part of the fabric of the place.' While Labour won Burnley at the last election, its vote share dropped. Having received the endorsement of Muslim community leaders, Lib Dem candidate and former MP Gordon Birtwistle shot up to second place. When I ask Anwar if he plans to challenge his old party at the next general election he insists he is focused on running the council for now. For many others in Burnley, Westminster simply has no relevance to their lives. Standing on the high street, Uwais, a young boxing trainer in a green shell suit, says he has no opinion of Starmer at all. He does not watch television. He does not follow the news. 'I don't think it makes much difference,' he says. 'There's still potholes and shit.' In any case, he insists, Burnley is great. He pivots to gesture at a ragged figure smoking on a nearby street corner. 'Look at that guy over there on spice: he's living his dream!' Luc Paul would vote but he has no ID. On a break from his shift at a children's toy shop, he tells me he is appalled at Starmer's volte-face on trans rights. In opposition, the prime minister said there was a 'desperate need' to introduce gender self-ID. Now, he does not believe that trans-women are women. 'I don't think he stands for anything. He only wants power so he can get money for himself,' Luc Paul says. 'The Greens, Lib Dems and the Scottish party have a lot more going for them.' Cradling his walking stick under his arm and smoking a rolled cigarette, Steven says he remains a Labour supporter but does not know anyone who could run the country now. 'The government aren't meeting the requirements,' he says. After being admitted to the Royal Blackburn Teaching Hospital recently for a routine operation (Burnley's A&E closed in 2007), his wife picked up an infection and became seriously unwell. He blames outsourced agency staff for messing up her care. Retired on health grounds himself, he says the government has not helped to improve his life to date. 'It's a case of surviving,' he adds glumly. What does Starmer stand for? Steven says he cannot put his finger on it. Perhaps the most positive assessment of the government available in Burnley is that it has simply not yet had time to get to grips with problems that long predate its election. Perhaps further decline is just to be expected. Perhaps Britain is headed inevitably in the same direction as Burnley's mills whichever party is elected. John, an older man standing alone by a handsome stone building, says that of course Starmer is going to make mistakes. 'They're miles better than the previous government,' he says. He plans to back Labour again at the next election. 'I don't think Starmer's doing a bad job,' he says. 'You've got to remember what they came into office to. You've got to bear in mind it's not going to turn around too quickly.' [See also: Reform UK's taproom revolutionaries] Related
