NOTHING beats a good feud, the noisier the better.
Everybody loves to pick a side. And the choice lets everyone else know what kind of person we truly are.
Keir Starmer faces a defining week as he struggles to win back working-class support and take aim at his political foes[/caption]
Even people who don’t take much interest in sport took sides between the unflappable Bjorn Borg and the volatile John McEnroe, between Muhammad Ali’s showbiz shuffle and Joe Frazier’s ghetto menace.
The rivalry between the so-called tough of the track Steve Ovett and the more elegant Seb Coe divided athletics.
More recently, music fans revelled in the disharmony between the liberal Taylor Swift and hip-hop Trump backer Kanye West.
But they don’t make enmity like they used to. Back in the day, the whole nation tuned in to the rivalry between Ena Sharples and Elsie Tanner on Corrie.
Ena, the street’s resident battleaxe, would attack her foe as “you tart” and a “common harpy”. Elsie, a glamorous divorcee, would hit back at her landlady with “you bandy- legged old bat”. The two characters offered a clear choice.
Most people don’t follow politics as closely as they follow Corrie or Strictly.
But it’s possible that the Labour Party conference, which kicks off in Liverpool tomorrow, will give us a battle that could be very, very tasty, as my boxing friends say — a political cage fight between Keir Starmer and the Mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham.
All week, the King of the North has been hinting that he’s available for a booking if the resident of No10 Downing Street fancies a rest.
‘Shiver through spine’
The Prime Minister has made it clear that, as far as he’s concerned, there won’t be a vacancy any time soon, and that his rival would do better to stay in his lane. Up North.
Even without a Burnham challenge, Starmer has his work cut out. Much has been written about his unpopularity, which this week plumbed new depths.
The latest polls predict that if an election were held today, it would be Nigel Farage heading to the Palace to kiss hands with the King, and returning to No10 as Prime Minister.
That said, Starmer still has time to climb out of the hole. The next election is probably years away.
But if he is to recover, he first has to let the nation know exactly who he is.
Women, who historically have leant to Labour, were aghast at the initial inability to answer the question ‘what is a woman?’
As the Prime Minister prepares his make-or-break address to the Labour Party conference this week, we need to learn whose side he is on.
It may be a lot to ask of someone who has made a reputation as an advocate for hire, arguing the case for clients he may not like or believe.
But Starmer is no longer a gun-for-hire barrister who can say whatever gets him through the day. He has to lead.
Yesterday, Starmer spoke passionately of a battle for the soul of the country, attempting to draw a line between himself and the man he says is the real enemy, Nigel Farage.
Right now, traditional Labour supporters, the people we used to call the working class, aren’t so sure that they’ve chosen the right side.
For example, pollsters have recently shown that state school graduates, who you’d expect to break for the party of the workers, currently back Reform by a two-to-one majority.
And in his attack on Farage, the Labour leader is in grave danger of missing the target and alienating traditional Labour voters, who already feel that every time the Prime Minister takes aim, it is they who suffer.
Protestors marching in Westminster two weeks ago – a group that Starmer labelled ‘poisonous’ extremists[/caption]
It wouldn’t be the first time.
Labour has yet to recover from the decision to cut the Winter Fuel Allowance, which took hundreds of pounds out of the pockets of pensioners, even though it has now reversed the policy.
Women, who historically have leant to Labour, were aghast at the initial inability to answer the question “what is a woman?”, and ministers’ surrender to the demands of a tiny group of trans activists, at the expense of their safety and security.
Ministers are hinting that the two-child benefit cap may be dropped in Rachel Reeves’ Budget in November.
Many Labour-supporting parents complain that they don’t see why, when they’re struggling financially to support one or two kids, they should subsidise people who, for their own reasons, made a different choice.
In fiery intervention to be broadcast by Sky News tomorrow, Sharon Graham, the boss of Britain’s biggest union, the 1.2million-strong Unite, tells me that her members are wondering how long they will have to wait for the pro-worker policies from a government they backed with money and votes last year.
And it is perhaps on his weakest ground, and Farage’s strongest, that the Prime Minister is about to make his biggest mistake.
Yesterday, addressing fellow leaders, he referred to the huge march in London two weeks ago, organised by the convicted thug Tommy Robinson, as “poisonous”.
He said that it had sent “a shiver through the spine” of many in Britain, particularly minority communities. And he implied that this was a demonstration in support of Robinson and Farage.
But he could not have been more wrong. I know, I was there, observing and reporting for both Sky News and The Times.
The PM needs to get out more or, at the very least, get more accurate information about the people he leads. To start with, among the reported 150,000 people there, the Robinson crew was a tiny minority.
They turned up to confront the anti-racist campaigners, who numbered just a few thousand in the usual fringe confrontation.
The vast majority of people there had nothing to do with these hooligans.
Labelling the more than 140,000 who marched as ‘poisonous’ extremists will have just one outcome: To drive them into the arms of Reform UK.
Second, if this march sent a shiver down anyone’s spine, they also need to get out more.
I made my name as a campaigner in the 1970s organising opposition to the brutish National Front. I was a fellow activist when the student Kevin Gately was killed in a clash with the NF in 1974.
And I know exactly what it feels like to be in the midst of a racist crowd.
Any person of colour who had the misfortune to support my football club, Chelsea, during the 70s and 80s had to keep a sharp eye out for a brick hurled at our head with the attendant name-calling.
The Unite the Kingdom march was more like any Saturday afternoon football crowd, though perhaps with more children.
Finally, it is simply wrong to suggest that this was a parade of racist bigots.
The placards being carried were many and various, but they came down to three basic demands: Stop immigration, defend free speech and revive Christianity.
Most people would agree with at least one of those slogans; many more than one.
Labelling the more than 140,000 who marched as “poisonous” extremists will have just one outcome: To drive them into the arms of Reform UK.
Defining your enemies matters in politics. We remember Churchill because of his defiance of the Nazis in the face of appeasement by Chamberlain.
Margaret Thatcher rescued her reputation after a torrid first term by taking on General Galtieri in the Falklands and then defeating Arthur Scargill in the miners’ strike. Tony Blair started to make Labour electable by completing Neil Kinnock’s expulsion of the far left from the party.
After 15 months, we still have little idea of who Keir Starmer really is against, except the Tories, who are, right now, pretty much a busted flush, and Jeremy Corbyn, who can’t even come up with a name for his new party.
When the Prime Minister rises to speak to the nation this week, he needs to choose his enemies wisely, and take careful aim.
Miss, and Starmer could spend the next four years as a one-term, lame-duck leader destined to be remembered as the man who opened the door of No10 to his chosen nemesis, Nigel Farage.
The PM misread the Unite the Kingdom crowd – only a small minority were Tommy Robinson supporters[/caption]
