Latest news with #ClementAttlee
Sky News
3 days ago
- Politics
- Sky News
Eighty years on from Labour's landslide, the humanitarian crisis in Gaza brings Clement Attlee's failure on Israel and Palestine to mind
Here's one for the aficionados: 26 July 2025 marks the 80th anniversary of Labour's landslide victory in the 1945 general election. Trade unionists and Labour MPs are celebrating, claiming the nation still owes a debt of gratitude for the historic achievements of Clement Attlee's government. Yet today, as the world watches the humanitarian crisis in Gaza with horror, it's worth recalling that one of Attlee's biggest failures was his Israel - Palestine policy. (Oh, and while Attlee's health minister Aneurin Bevan boasted he "stuffed their mouths with gold" to overcome doctors' opposition to the NHS, today doctors are on strike over pay again.) The 1945 election took place on 5 July, the same date Sir Keir Starmer entered 10 Downing Street last year. But with British armed forces still serving overseas in 1945, it took until 26 July to declare the result. 9:30 Labour won 393 seats in 1945, compared with 411 last year. But while Sir Keir's Labour only won 34% of the votes, Mr Attlee won nearly 50%. But then, there was no insurgent Reform UK back then. Celebrating the 80th anniversary, Joanne Thomas, who became general secretary of the shopworkers' union Usdaw in April this year, said the Attlee government left a lasting legacy. "Usdaw's predecessor unions were proud to play a role in the 1945 election victory and to see 18 of our members elected," she said. "Not least a hero of our union 'Red Ellen', a fiery trade union organiser who led the Jarrow hunger march and went on to serve as education minister." Wilkinson was indeed red. Attlee biographer Trevor Burridge wrote: "Ellen Wilkinson was made minister of education despite the fact that she had actively campaigned against his leadership." She was MP for Jarrow, not a million miles from the current education secretary and Starmer super-loyalist Bridget Phillipson's Houghton and Sunderland South constituency. But not even her best friends would call her red! Ellen Wilkinson was also the only woman in Attlee's 1945 cabinet. Last year, Sir Keir made history by appointing 11 women to his cabinet. Labour MP Marie Tidball, elected last year, joined the tributes to Attlee. "He transformed Britain for working people and this legacy laid the foundations for Britain today - our NHS, welfare state and homes for heroes. "Those public services meant I could grow up to fulfil my potential. Labour legend." But if Attlee's NHS, welfare state and nationalisation are viewed as successes by Labour trade unionists and MPs, his government's policy on Palestine is widely agreed to have been a failure. In his acclaimed biography of Attlee's foreign secretary, "Ernest Bevin: Labour's Churchill", former Blairite cabinet minister Andrew Adonis wrote: "Why did Bevin get Israel/Palestine so wrong?" Adonis says Bevin's policy on Palestine "led to the precise opposite of its declared intention of stability and the peaceful co-existence of the Jewish and Palestinian communities within one state at peace with its neighbours". He concluded: "Instead, Bevin's legacy was a Jewish state of Israel, much larger than even most of its advocates previously favoured, in periodic war and perpetual tension with both its Palestinians and its Arab neighbours." Where did Bevin go wrong? Adonis wrote: "In the first place, because, during the three key years 1945-48, he did not agree that his central policy objective was 'good relations with the United States'." As Sir Keir Starmer prepares to meet Donald Trump in Scotland, 80 years after the historic Attlee victory, that's clearly not a mistake the current Labour PM has made in his relations with the US president. " I like your prime minister," the president said as he arrived in Scotland, "he's slightly more liberal than I am, but I like him". So, 80 years on from Attlee, lessons have been learned. So far, so good, that is.
Sky News
6 days ago
- Business
- Sky News
Welfare versus warfare: Sir Keir Starmer's unresolved question - and why the PM's pinned his hopes on economic growth
Welfare versus warfare: for decades, it's a question to which successive prime ministers have responded with one answer. After the end of the Cold War, leaders across the West banked the so-called "peace dividend" that came with the end of this conflict between Washington and Moscow. Instead of funding their armies, they invested in the welfare state and public services instead. But now the tussle over this question is something that the current prime minister is grappling with, and it is shaping up to be one of the biggest challenges for Sir Keir Starmer since he got the job last year. As Clement Attlee became the Labour prime minister credited with creating the welfare state after the end of the Second World War, so it now falls on the shoulders of the current Labour leader to create the warfare state as Europe re-arms. 3:15 Be it Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister, arguing last year that Europe had moved from the post-war era to the pre-war era; or European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen calling on the EU to urgently re-arm Ukraine so it is a "steel porcupine" against Russian invaders; there is a consensus that the UK and Europe are on - to quote Sir Keir - a "war footing" and must spend more on defence. To that end the prime minister has committed to increase UK defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2027, raiding the overseas development aid budget to do so, and has also committed, alongside other NATO allies, to spend 5 per cent of GDP on defence by 2035. 1:05 That is a huge leap in funding and a profound shift from what have been the priorities for government spending - the NHS, welfare, education - in recent decades. The Institute for Fiscal Studies' Carl Emmerson said the increase, in today's terms, would be like adding approximately £30bn to the 2027 target of spending around £75bn on core defence. Sir Keir has been clear-eyed about the decision, arguing that the first duty of any prime minister is to keep his people safe. But the pledge has raised the obvious questions about how those choices are funded, and whether other public services will face cuts at a time when the UK's economic growth is sluggish and public finances are under pressure. This, then, is one of his biggest challenges: can he make sure Britain looks after itself in a fragile world, while also sticking to his promises to deliver for the country? It is on this that the prime minister has come unstuck over the summer, as he was forced to back down over proposed welfare cuts to the tune of £5bn at the end of this term, in the face of a huge backbench rebellion. Many of his MPs want warfare and welfare. 2:11 "There's been a real collision in recent weeks between those two policy worlds," explains Jim Murphy, who served both as a welfare minister under Tony Blair and shadow defence secretary under Ed Miliband. "In welfare, how do you provide for the people who genuinely need support and who, without the state's support, couldn't survive? What's the interplay between that and the unconditional strategic need to invest more in defence? "For the government, they either get economic growth or they have a series of eye-watering choices in which there can be no compromise with the defence of the state and everything else faces very serious financial pressures." He added: "No Labour politician comes into politics to cut welfare schools or other budgets. But on the basis that defence is non-negotiable, everything else, unfortunately, may face those cuts." 7:02 While the PM sees this clearly, ask around the cabinet table and ministers will admit that the tough choices society will need to take if they genuinely want to respond to the growing threat from Russia, compounded by the unpredictability of Donald Trump, is yet to fully sink in. There are generations of British citizens that have only ever lived in peace, that do not, like I do, remember the Cold War or the Troubles. There are also millions of Britons struggling with the cost of living and and public satisfaction with key public services is at historic lows. That is why Labour campaigned in the election on the promise of change, to raise living standards and cut NHS waiting lists. Ask the public, and 49 per cent of people recognise defence spending needs to increase. But 53 per cent don't want it to come from other areas of public spending, while 55 per cent are opposed to paying more tax to fund that defence increase. There is also significant political resistance from the Labour Party. Sir Keir's attempts to make savings in the welfare budget have been roundly rejected by his MPs. Instead, his backbenchers are talking about more tax rises to fund public services, or even a broader rethink of Rachel Reeves' fiscal rules. 6:36 Anneliese Dodds, who quit as development minister over cuts to the overseas aid budget, wrote in her resignation letter that she had "expected [cabinet] would collectively discuss our fiscal rules and approach to taxation, as other nations are doing", as part of a wider discussion about the changing threats. In an interview for our Electoral Dysfunction podcast, which will be released later this summer, she expanded on this idea. She said: "I think it's really important to take a step back and think about what's going to be necessary, looking ten, twenty years ahead. It looks like the world is not going to become safer, unfortunately, during that period. It's really important that we increase defence spending. "I think that does mean we've got to really carefully consider those issues about our fiscal rules and about taxation. That isn't easy…nonetheless, I think we will have to face up to some really big issues. "Now is the time when we need to look at what other countries are doing. We need to consider whether we have the right system in place." For the Labour MP, that means potentially re-assessing the fiscal rules and how the fiscal watchdog assesses government spending to perhaps give the government more leeway. She also believes that the government should look again at tax rises. She added: "We do, I believe, need to think about taxation. "Now again, there's no magic wand. There will be implications from any change that would be made. As I said before, we are quite highly taxing working people now, but I think there are ways in which we can look at taxation, not without implications. "But in a world of difficult trade-offs, we've got to take the least worst trade-off for the long term. And that's what I think is gonna be really important." Those trade-offs are going to be discussed more and more into the autumn, ahead of what is looking like an extremely difficult budget for the PM and Ms Reeves. Not only is the chancellor now dealing with a £5bn shortfall in her accounts from the welfare reform reversal, but she is also dealing with higher-than-expected borrowing costs, fuelled by surging debt costs. Plus, the government borrowing £3.5bn more than forecast last month, with June's borrowing coming in at £20.7bn - the second-highest figure since records began in 1993. Some economists are now predicting that the chancellor will have to raise taxes or cut spending by around £20bn in the budget to fill the growing black hole. Jeremy Hunt, former Conservative chancellor and now backbencher, tells me he was "massively disappointed" that Labour blinked on welfare reform. He said: "First of all, it's terrible for people who are currently trapped on welfare, but secondly, because the risk is that the consequence of that, is that we get trapped in a doom loop of every higher taxes and lower growth." 'This group of politicians have everything harder ' Mr Murphy says he has sympathy for the predicament of this Labour government and the task they face. He explained: "We were fortunate [back in the early 2000s] in that the economy was still relatively OK, and we were able to reform welfare and do really difficult reforms. This is another world. "This group of politicians have everything harder than we had. They've got an economy that has been contracting, public services post-Covid in trouble, a restless public, a digital media, an American president who is at best unreliable, a Russian president. "Back then [in the 2000s] it was inconceivable that we would fight a war with Russia. On every measure, this group of politicians have everything harder than we ever had." Over the summer and into the autumn, the drumbeat of tax rises will only get louder, particularly amongst a parliamentary party seemingly unwilling to back spending cuts. But that just delays a problem unresolved, which is how a government begins to spend billions more on defence whilst also trying to maintain a welfare state and rebuild public services. This is why the government is pinning so much hope onto economic growth as it's escape route out of its intractable problem. Because without real economic growth to help pay for public services, the government will have to make a choice - and warfare will win out. What is still very unclear is how Sir Keir manages to take his party and the people with him.
Scotsman
6 days ago
- Politics
- Scotsman
Glenrothes is living proof why UK needs a second Clement Attlee in charge
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... On the back of its landslide victory at the 1945 general election, Clement Attlee's Labour government decided that a better Britain should be built. A high-point of this vision was the 35 new towns built across the UK, with five in Scotland: Cumbernauld, East Kilbride, Glenrothes, Irvine and Livingston. Their role was to give working-class families decent homes, fresh air away from polluted industrial cities, modern schools and easy access to leisure and culture in places that separated industry and busy roads from where people lived. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The British state financed, planned, built and ran the towns. Everything was developed from scratch on what had been green fields. Until the mid-90s, when their management transferred to local authorities, all this was done by unelected development corporations. This was moderate, gradualist, altruistic social democracy writ large. Children play in Glenrothes, one of five new towns created in Scotland by an Act of Parliament in 1946 (Picture: Keystone Features) | Getty Images A modern mining town I was once the London representative of the Scottish new towns. Since then, I've had a lingering affection for them. I opted for a visit to Glenrothes, a town born in 1947. Glenrothes' genesis was the Rothes Colliery 'super pit'. Opened in 1948, it was forecast to produce coal for many decades. Glenrothes was to be a modern mining town. Geological problems closed the pit in 1962. Glenrothes joined the other new towns in seeking fresh types of employment, mainly through inward investment by US electronics concerns. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad My day in the town starts with coffee at the recently refurbished Kingdom Shopping Centre. Bakers & Barista's manager Jackie Beveridge says the centre is busy all day, 'and getting busier'. I find a library is part of the Kingdom Centre. Library assistant Sheena Balls helps me find books on the architecture of the town and on the many sculptures by the artists once employed by Glenrothes Development Corporation. Almost all the works still exist and are much loved by locals. The motivation for the sculptures was the same as that which brought us the Arts Council and the Open University: a better society. Clement Attlee and his wife Violet wave to crowds in London in July 1945 after Labour won the election earlier that month (Picture: Keystone) | Getty Images 'A glorified housing estate' Sheena Balls lives in the town. She thinks the idealism and vision that created the place has been lost. 'Subsequent leaders have strayed very far from the original concept. Glenrothes is now a glorified housing estate.' Church of Scotland minister, the Rev Alan Kimmitt, has a rosier view of Glenrothes, though his feet are firmly planted on the ground. He deals daily with every sort of despair, isolation and joy that human beings encounter. Kimmitt had a business career before taking the cloth. St Columba's is his first charge. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Forty years ago, the Church of Scotland was a dominant force in Scottish and Glenrothes life. Today, Kimmitt's architecturally magnificent St Columba's Church, built in 1962, is part of an alliance of six local kirks, mustering only some 150 people for Sunday services, which rotate between the parishes. Kimmitt acknowledges Scotland's growing secularism, finding it hard to pin down how it has happened. He's more comfortable discussing his pastoral role. He knows his parish and can read the heartbeat of Glenrothes. He sees a place of civic pride, perhaps less insular and more welcoming than older, more traditional places. 'There's a strong and distinct civic identity tied up with the new town. Everybody's an incomer or the child of an incomer.' Dancing pumps If religious observance has changed dramatically in Glenrothes, so too have other elements of its canvas. Where once multi-national, high-tech businesses made Glenrothes a key part of Scotland's 'Silicon Glen', most have now gone. The companies making things today are mainly smaller concerns. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Local SNP MSP Jenny Gilruth says small-to-medium enterprises are 'the backbone' of the local economy. 'Last year, 9,270 properties in Fife, including in Glenrothes, received £39.9 million from the Scottish Government in non-domestic rates relief,' she says. I visit Thistle Shoes, a 40-year-old family business making dance pumps and supplying shoes to pipe bands internationally. Managing director Pamela McDowall tells me her business is the official supplier of pumps to the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Each dancer goes through three pairs of pumps. Three of her six staff live in Glenrothes. She says she couldn't ask for better folk. 'Everybody here mucks in.' Richard Baker, the town's Labour MP, found a minute to call and talk about the various renewable energy projects in the district. We spoke the day after the Reform party announced that if it wins the next UK general election it will end all subsidies for renewable energy. Baker was scathing in his response. 'Reform's proposals are reckless in the extreme. Their idiot plan would be devastating for Scotland, for consumers, for industry and for energy security. It would lead to lost jobs, higher prices and businesses collapsing.' Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Paternalistic social engineering? Glenrothes has its poverty and deprivation and its fair share of often struggling immigrants and disaffected young people. However, it felt livelier and a bit more self-confident than other towns of similar size I've visited on my tour. Critics of the post-war new towns accused them of social engineering, a paternalistic state telling the working classes how to live, while giving their early inhabitants no democratic say in the priorities of the towns. Some British new towns are far from socially or economically successful. Glenrothes, I think, is not among them. Is there any political party with the vision, courage and ideas for improving the economic and social lot of ordinary people shown by Clement Attlee's 1945 government? If there is, they're doing a good job of hiding their boldness from us.
Times
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Times
Keir Starmer isn't the new Attlee — but who could be?
T his month Labour celebrates the election of a leader who transformed Britain. Unfortunately for Sir Keir Starmer, it's not him. Eighty years ago Clement Attlee and his allies swept aside Winston Churchill's Conservatives and instituted a policy programme that moved Britain decisively to the left, nationalising not just health services but road haulage, rail and air; gas, coal and steel; the Bank of England; and of course the land and housing supply. For the Labour Party, Attlee has become a patron saint in the same way Thatcher is for the Tories — proof that the movement, and its values, really can change the country. (Tellingly, their tenures also tend to be viewed on the other side as having wrenched Britain irrevocably on to the wrong course.)
Telegraph
05-07-2025
- Automotive
- Telegraph
Oscar Piastri interview: the world champion hopeful schooled in England
Haileybury school in Hertfordshire has produced some notable alumni over the years. Clement Attlee, the post-war Labour prime minister, attended the co-educational independent school. Poet and novelist Rudyard Kipling and playwright Sir Alan Ayckbourn are Old Haileyburians. Film-maker Christopher Nolan and actor Stephen Mangan were also on the school's books. In the world of Formula One, Haileybury can lay claim to one of the greatest: Sir Stirling Moss. The British icon, widely regarded as one of the finest motor racing drivers of all time, won more than 200 races in a variety of categories across a 14-year competition career. Famously, though, Moss never actually won the Formula One world title, finishing runner-up on four occasions. Oscar Piastri is hoping to make up for that omission on the school's CV this year. 'That's the plan,' says the Australian. 'It's going OK so far. I feel like I've taken a step forward this year. I feel ready.' Heading into this weekend's British Grand Prix at Silverstone, it is intriguingly poised. Piastri, with five wins under his belt in 11 races, leads the championship by 15 points from his McLaren team-mate Lando Norris. By rights Norris should really be favourite for the title. The Briton is the more experienced driver and has been at McLaren for longer than Piastri. But Piastri is the odds-on favourite with the bookies. That he is so unbothered by that fact is the reason he is so heavily fancied. Piastri just seems to be bullet-proof. Ice cold. Where Norris has blown hot and cold this season, making numerous mistakes in qualifying and shunting into the back of Piastri in Canada, the Australian has been rock solid, his race-craft impeccable. Norris may still have him for outright pace, but Piastri is getting quicker and has definitely been the more consistent driver. 'I feel comfortable in the position I'm in,' he says when asked what it's like leading the Formula One world championship for the first time, as a 24-year-old. 'The way I look at it, if you're leading a championship, you're probably doing something right. And I feel like we have been doing quite a few things right. My ultimate performance has probably improved a bit this year, but I feel like I'm able to access it much more consistently so far. That's probably been the biggest thing.' Piastri was always a quick learner. He recalls growing up in Melbourne, always wanting to be first at everything. 'Even in my schoolwork,' he says. 'I wanted to do it better than anyone, and also do it faster than anyone, which kind of makes no sense. I would do it as fast as I could, but it kind of came at the cost of some accuracy. I soon learnt it's better to be accurate because otherwise you spend 15 minutes sitting there doing nothing, and it's not very useful for you when you get your score back.' There is actually rather an awkward postscript to the Stirling Moss-Haileybury connection. Moss later confessed to being unhappy at the school; bullied for reasons of his presumed Jewish origins. Piastri, though, says the school was the making of him. Moving 10,000 miles from Melbourne to the UK as a 15-year-old forced him to grow up. He spent four years as a boarder in Kipling House – England rugby player Nick Isiekwe was in the same house, although a few years older – and says it was a period in which he 'really developed'. Growing up in Melbourne he had always been sports-mad. AFL, cricket, athletics, basketball. Motor racing allowed little time for any of those, but he still turned out for the school's 3rd XI. Piastri's teachers remember a diligent and conscientious student who juggled his extracurricular activities with his academic work with great maturity. 'Oscar never demonstrated anything other than exemplary humility and remarkable composure throughout his four years at Haileybury,' recalled one teacher, Andy Searson, adding that Piastri was 'capable of bowling a heavy ball with an intimidating run-up'. The picture that emerges is one of a very grounded young man. Piastri met his girlfriend, Lily, at school when they were just 17, before they had even taken their A-levels (maths, physics and computer science, in Piastri's case, if you were wondering). They are still together six years later. 'Having that stability is nice,' he says of their relationship. 'Lily has been there from the start, from single-seaters to Formula One. A constant in what is quite a manic world.' Piastri is so nice, so calm, so well-prepared – 'the kind of schoolboy who had his pencils sharpened in front of him on his desk' as Damon Hill remarked on the Chequered Flag podcast earlier this year – it is easy to forget what a killer he is in the car. He appears bemused by the openness and vulnerability Norris displays on a weekly basis, even while praising it. 'Lando is a very open person,' he says of his team-mate. 'Speaking honestly, sometimes to his own detriment. But at the same time, it is a good quality to have. We are different people, but I do respect the way he goes about it.' As for whether he is less minded to smash his team-mate given how scrupulously fair Norris is, how lacking in sharp elbows, he just laughs. 'Not really,' he says. 'My opinion is you can't give an inch to anyone, regardless of who it is – in racing or in sport. And that doesn't really change. Especially once the helmet goes on. I get on with Lando. But once the helmet goes on, for all 20 of us, there are no more friends.' In this area, one senses the hand of Mark Webber, Piastri's compatriot who has been guiding his career from the start. Webber always had to fight his corner at Red Bull, forever battling for equal treatment in a team built around Red Bull wunderkind Sebastian Vettel. Piastri does not have that issue at McLaren. Webber has made sure of it. 'I think in terms of fighting my corner, it's been very, very valuable for me,' Piastri says of Webber's influence. 'Not that he has had to fight particularly hard in this environment. But just the experiences he had in his own career, being in a championship-winning team, fighting for a championship, there is a lot of hindsight which is very valuable for me. 'Some lessons you can only learn for yourself. But I definitely feel as if I've escaped a lot of [negative] lessons because of Mark's experience. Helping me avoid potential pitfalls. He thinks of questions either to ask me, or my engineers, or the team, before they occur to me. I feel like in the first couple of years of my career that was incredibly valuable and fast-tracked me to where I am now.' One thing is certain, if Norris is to prevail this season, it is not going to be handed to him. Piastri may have grown up on the playing fields of one of England's top public schools, but he remains an Australian through and through. He is teak tough and like all Australian sportsmen, appears imbued with self-confidence. Before he goes, I ask him for his predictions for the upcoming British & Irish Lions Test series. 'I don't actually follow the rugby that closely,' he says. 'Where I grew up, AFL was king.' What about the Ashes this winter? 'Oh, that's a different matter,' he says, smiling. 'Hopefully, I'll get to a game. Australia are going through a bit of a tricky spell at the moment. But on home soil? I'd always back Australia.' On British soil this weekend, one suspects he will back himself just the same.
