Sir Keir Starmer's 'Ten Commandments' for the UK to turn left

The

divine

Giulio Andreotti has

already said it

, in a political formula as Italian as it is universal: "Power wears out those who do not have it."

Sir Keir Starmer, the lawyer, prosecutor and MP, took over the reins of the British Labor Party a year and a half ago.

He replaced veteran leftist Jeremy Corbyn, who sparked fervor among disenchanted youth, skyrocketed membership, dizzy voters with his double game over Brexit, and ended up reaping a historic defeat in December 2019 to the most humiliating of opponents. : Boris Johnson.

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• The end of the pandemic in the United Kingdom accelerates the electoral strategy of Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer

That same rival has managed to survive a devastating pandemic that it managed erratically from the beginning. And he has used the ravages of the virus to camouflage others caused by himself: those derived from Brexit. The blows Starmer made his debut in front of the prime minister, during Wednesday's control sessions in the House of Commons, shocked Johnson and lifted dismal spirits in the Labor ranks. The leader of the opposition - impeccable razor cut; sober suit and tailored tailored - with the inquisitive scalpel of a former prosecutor, he cornered a head of government more concerned with slogans than with the technical or strategic details of his health policy.

The mirage was short-lived.

The success of the vaccination campaign brought Johnson back to life.

The defeat of Labor in the municipal elections last May, and above all, the loss of the seat of the northeastern district of Hartlepool, always in the hands of the left, once again sowed doubts about the figure of Starmer.

Labor holds its annual conference next week in the seaside town of Brighton.

It will be the opportunity for the new leader of the formation to clarify if he wants to be as reformist as Tony Blair, as radical as Jeremy Corbyn or as classic in his approaches as Clement Attlee, the prime minister who set up the British welfare state after the Second World War.

To warm up engines, Starmer has published an 11,500-word manifesto, called

The Road Ahead.

(The route ahead) that aims to synthesize his political vision. Almost as important as the content is where you choose to post it. On the website of the Fabian Society, the British socialist movement founded at the end of the 19th century in which the roots of the Labor Party are found. Inspired by the name of the Roman general Quinto Fabio Máximo - who defeated the troops of the Carthaginian Hannibal with patience and harassment - the Fabians sought, in the face of the proletarian revolution of Marxism, a slow and settled arrival of socialism through gradual reforms . Starmer has yet to see if in the current policy of acceleration, the party - and above all, the still powerful remnants of Corbynism - will have the patience to let him deploy his opposition strategy.

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The manifesto, full of vagueness and good intentions, is more like a catechism than a government program.

And, at the end of its 35 pages, everything is summed up in

ten commandments

:

• Always putting working families ahead

• Fairly reward those who work hard and abide by the rules

• That people and companies contribute to society, in addition to receiving

• That vital opportunities do not depend on the circumstances of birth

• The family and the community, everything that unites, must be placed above individualism

• The economy must work for the benefit of citizens and the community

• The Government must be a partner of the private economy, and not stifle it

• The government must use the taxpayer's money as if it were its own.

  Current levels of waste are intolerable

• The Government must restore honesty, decency and transparency in public life

• We are deeply patriotic, but we reject the division caused by nationalism

Starmer has a problem with his decalogue of good intentions. All of them Boris Johnson could sign without blushing. The Conservative Party has erased from its speech any reference to the austerity of the past decade. Downing Street has gone into debt like there is no tomorrow. He has raised taxes with a surcharge on social contributions to inject extra funding to the National Health Service, and reform the Dependency and Care for the Elderly system. That is to say, it has provided tranquility to the society of small owners (of a property) that is today British society.

Starmer plays on a delicate terrain, in which he does not want to step on calluses in the business world, he avoids at all costs to resurrect the specter of Brexit - he limits himself to criticizing his "sloppy management" -, he praises the family, the neighborhood, the community, patriotism. And he charges against Scottish nationalism, as guilty, according to him, as the conservatives, of the climate of division of the country. In other words, he plays on Johnson's ground. With the difference that the electorate is, today, more willing to support and laugh the thanks

of Boris

thug

than to make a leap of faith with the pristine Starmer. Legend has it that Helen Fielding relied on him - he was a notorious just cause advocate at the time - to create the character of Mark Darcy in

The Bridget Jones Diary.

As the topic would say,

the husband to whom every mother aspires for her daughter.

Many Labor voters, for now, are sticking with Naughty Boris Johnson, even if he doesn't look like Hugh Grant.

Against the primaries

Starmer's team has announced its intention to use the party's annual congress, to be held next week in Brighton, to re-change the internal rules of the formation. He wants to end the system of election of the leader that Ed Milliband established in 2014 - one militant, one vote - to return to the previous one, which gave a third of the vote to the militants, another third to the unions and another to the parliamentary group. Jeremy Corbyn swept his election with the support of militant youth organizations like Momentum. Membership soared, much to the chagrin of Labor MPs. Most of them came from the Tony Blair era, and they were appalled at the radicalism of the veteran leftist. Starmer raises his turn as a way to strengthen the alliance with the unions,essential to carry out your economic plans. But the reverse gear, no matter how representative the election system, has an undemocratic stink that does not even convince the party leader's allies. Sharon Graham, the new leader of the Unite union - the largest in the United Kingdom - has already announced that she will not attend the Brighton conference. He has made an excuse for the need to focus on all the labor disputes that the union has open at the moment, but he has also made clear his displeasure at the proposed reform of the Labor leadership election system. Whether the measure goes ahead or not, at the beginning of the congress, will be the touchstone to determine if Starmer leaves the Brighton conclave strengthened or weakened.however representative the election system may be, it has an undemocratic stink that does not even convince the party leader's allies. Sharon Graham, the new leader of the Unite union - the largest in the United Kingdom - has already announced that she will not attend the Brighton conference. He has made an excuse for the need to focus on all the labor disputes that the union has open at the moment, but he has also made clear his displeasure at the proposed reform of the Labor leadership election system. Whether the measure goes ahead or not, at the beginning of the congress, will be the touchstone to determine if Starmer leaves the Brighton conclave strengthened or weakened.however representative the election system may be, it has an undemocratic stink that does not even convince the party leader's allies. Sharon Graham, the new leader of the Unite union - the largest in the United Kingdom - has already announced that she will not attend the Brighton conference. He has made an excuse for the need to focus on all the labor disputes that the union has open at the moment, but he has also made clear his displeasure at the proposed reform of the Labor leadership election system. Whether the measure goes ahead or not, at the beginning of the congress, will be the touchstone to determine if Starmer leaves the Brighton conclave strengthened or weakened.the new leader of the Unite union - the largest in the UK - has already announced that she will not attend the Brighton congress. He has made an excuse for the need to focus on all the labor disputes that the union has open at the moment, but he has also made clear his displeasure at the proposed reform of the Labor leadership election system. Whether the measure goes ahead or not, at the beginning of the congress, will be the touchstone to determine if Starmer leaves the Brighton conclave strengthened or weakened.the new leader of the Unite union - the largest in the UK - has already announced that she will not attend the Brighton congress. He has made an excuse for the need to focus on all the labor disputes that the union has open at the moment, but he has also made clear his displeasure at the proposed reform of the Labor leadership election system. Whether the measure goes ahead or not, at the beginning of the congress, will be the touchstone to determine if Starmer leaves the Brighton conclave strengthened or weakened.but he has also made clear his displeasure at the proposed reform of the Labor leadership election system. Whether the measure goes ahead or not, at the beginning of the congress, will be the touchstone to determine if Starmer leaves the Brighton conclave strengthened or weakened.but he has also made clear his displeasure at the proposed reform of the Labor leadership election system. Whether the measure goes ahead or not, at the beginning of the congress, will be the touchstone to determine if Starmer leaves the Brighton conclave strengthened or weakened.

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