Labour Party

• Trade unions have been linked to the Labour Party since its foundation in 1900
• 2019-2022

  Keir Starmer

  Took over the leadership in April 2020 in the midst of Covid lockdown number 1.

  Pledge to kick anti-Semitism out of the party and kept some of Corbyn’s policy but is moving the party more towards the centre.

  Has been criticised for not holding the Conservatives to account and after an initial boost (forensic) his popularity fell. In May 2021 labour performed poorly in local elections.

  Since then Keir Starmer and Labour have become more popular, polling at over 50% in late September and early October 2022 and are largely seen as a government in waiting.
• 2010-2015 Ed Miliband

  New Labour ran out of steam and after the problems of Iraq and financial crisis, it lost the 2010 election. 

  This can be seen in the 2010 leadership campaign- Ed Miliband (Protégé of Brown) against his brother David Miliband (Protégé of Blair).

  Ed Miliband took Labour party more to the left but lost the 2015 election, which in the process lost Scotland to the SNP and Labour again in crisis.
• Old Labour (social democracy): a form of socialism that operates within a capitalist system where the government promotes wealth redistribution to provide for greater social equality. This term was commonly used to describe left wing Labour policies that dominated the party in the 1940s and in the 1970s- 80s and 2019
• New Labour: a compromise between Old Labour and social democracy and Thatcherite neo-liberalism; it is pragmatic and promotes individualism within a social framework A term commonly used to describe the moderate policies of the Labour party dominant between the 1990s and 2015. Also called Third Way meaning an ideology between Capitalism and Socialism.
• In May 1994 the leader of the Labour Party, John Smith, died suddenly. He had only been Party Leader since July 1992 and his death came as a major shock to the whole nation.

  In the leadership election that followed, Tony Blair became Party Leader, with 57% of the overall vote
• The New Labour movement subscribed to the ‘Third Way’ political philosophy.  The central premise of this was to find a middle-ground between Socialism and Capitalism. Whilst continuing to be the party of social justice and the working-class, New Labour deviated from the traditional Labour view of how to achieve this.
• Born as a Socialist Party in February 1900 , the Labour Party had traditionally believed that social justice would be achieved through an interventionist government. This intervention was typically seen through the public ownership of key public industries.
• After the landslide victory of Clement Attlee’s Labour Party in 1945 around a third of all British industry was placed into public ownership, for example, the coal mining industry. This socialist system was put under pressure in the 1970s and in the 1980s, it began to be removed as the Government of Margaret Thatcher, having commissioned a report called the Ridley Report, began to privatise industry. For example, in the 1980s Thatcher privatized electricity, telecoms and the rail industries, among many others.
• Clement Attlee defeated wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill in the 1945 General Election. He launched a socialist revolution in the United Kingdom.
• “To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution, and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service.”

  Clause IV of the Labour Constitution 1918
• Throughout the 1980s, the Labour Opposition under Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock, remained committed to re-nationalisation of these industries. Central to this was Clause IV of the Labour Constitution. 
• “The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect“

  Clause IV after 1995
• As a backbencher during the Blair years, Jeremy Corbyn voted against his own party’s government 428 times. In the three election years, 1997, 2001 and 2005, he was the most rebellious Labour MP.
• Nationalisation – The process of bringing industries under the control of the Government.
• Clause IV – The clause of the Labour Constitution that committed the party to supporting nationalisation of key industries.
• Equality of Opportunity: unfair advantages in society should be removed and all should enjoy equal life chances
• Labour has a long term plan to get Britain’s future back: five fully funded national missions:

  • Get Britain Building Again
  • Switch on Great British Energy
  • Get the NHS back on its feet
  • Take back our streets
  • Break down barriers to opportunity
• “I’ve changed the Labour Party so we are back in service of working people. Together we can change Britain.”

  Keir Starmer MP Leader of the Labour Party
•  Labour has ditched the commitment to spend £28bn a year on its green prosperity plan, a pledge first announced in Rachel Reeves’s 2021 conference speech.
• Labour could restrict the number of branded uniform items to keep costs down. Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson said a Labour government would tackle costs “as a matter of urgency”.
• When he ran for the Labour leadership, Starmer pledged to bring public services — name-checking rail, mail, energy and water — into “common ownership,” seen by many as a clear nod to nationalization of utilities long in private hands. But, as early as September 2021, Starmer ruled out nationalizing the big six energy companies
• in July 2022, his Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves said Labour has ditched its commitment to nationalize more public services, pointing to her shadow Treasury team’s strict fiscal rules — seen as crucial in convincing the public Labour can be trusted on the economy. Starmer later suggested he sees a role for public ownership in the rail network but otherwise he’s made it pretty clear he’s committed to Reeves’ rules.
• One of Starmer’s leadership pledges concerned stopping the creeping involvement of the private sector in the U.K.’s publicly-funded NHS. Starmer said he would “end outsourcing” in the NHS as he ran for leader. But, in an interview in the summer of 2022, he said the party will “likely have to continue with” some level of private provision in the health service if he takes office. Since then, his health spokesperson Wes Streeting has offered to hold the door “wide open” for the private sector.
• As public sector strikes hit Britain in the summer of 2022, Starmer ordered his shadow ministers not to appear alongside workers on picket lines. The Labour leader even sacked Sam Tarry, a left-wing MP and his shadow rail minister, for appearing with striking rail workers despite the order. Starmer’s team said Tarry was sacked for making up party policy in a TV interview. All of that came despite Starmer promising that his Labour Party would “work shoulder to shoulder with trade unions to stand up for working people” as he ran for leader.
• Starmer initially promised to abolish Universal Credit, the overarching — and famously complex — system for Brits who claim social security payments. As of 2023, Labour policy was instead to “fundamentally reform” the system. Starmer’s Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Jon Ashworth said his party “actually agree[s] with the concept behind Universal Credit.”

  Many argue that UC compounds the issue of poverty because the initial six week wait period can lead people to rent arrears and food poverty.
• One of the key planks of Corbyn’s platform as leader was his pledge to abolish university tuition fees. Starmer inherited and reiterated this pledge when he ran for leader.

  But he dropped the policy in May last year, admitting he is “likely to move on from that commitment” and blaming Britain’s pretty dire economic situation. The party has instead said it will focus on lowering graduates’ monthly re-payments.
• The first nine words of — you guessed it — Starmer’s list of 2020 leadership pledges couldn’t be clearer: “Increase income tax for the top 5 percent of earners.”Three years down the line and Starmer was still being clear — but in the opposite direction. Asked directly by the Telegraph last summer if he would raise income tax for top earners, he said his principle was to “lower taxes,” and that he isn’t “looking to the lever of taxation.”
• Starmer pledged in his leadership campaign to abolish the U.K.’s unelected second chamber, the House of Lords. He has repeatedly reaffirmed this pledge, including as recently as November 2022. Some wondered about this commitment when Starmer’s spokesperson in June last year indicated the Labour leader may in fact appoint new peers to the chamber
• Labour’s top team is no fan of the Conservatives’ two-child benefit cap, which prevents British parents from claiming welfare benefits for more than two children. Keir Starmer too had promised to scrap the policy when he ran for leader.But fast forward to July 2023 and Starmer’s new position was that a Labour government is “not changing that policy.”
• After months of pressure over Labour’s flagship £28 billion-a-year green investment promise, Keir Starmer finally announced its death in February 2024.