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LAST UPDATE | 4 Apr 2020
BRITAIN’S MAIN OPPOSITION Labour party has elected Sir Keir Starmer as its new leader, replacing Jeremy Corbyn.
Starmer, a former director of state prosecutions and Labour’s Brexit spokesman, was the runaway favourite to win the ballot of around 500,000 party members.
He beat rivals Rebecca Long-Bailey and Lisa Nandy after the first round of voting.
It marks a significant change of direction for the party, with a move away from the politics of Corbyn and Ed Miliband who led Labour over the last decade.
His victory came after the planned special conference to unveil the winner had to be shelved because of the coronavirus crisis.
Angela Rayner won the deputy leadership race.
Smart and studious, but accused of lacking charisma, Starmer has vowed to get the party back in shape after December’s general election, when it suffered its worst result since the 1930s.
Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson triumphed by winning parliamentary seats in Labour’s former industrial heartlands.
It was Corbyn’s second election defeat – the fourth for Labour since it left office in 2010 – and he was forced to resign.
Starmer has now promised to unite the party after years of bitter arguments about Corbyn’s socialist agenda, Brexit and the leadership’s handling of claims of anti-Semitism.
“We get the chance to rebuild our party and our movement and, more importantly than that, the chance to put Labour where it needs to be back, which is back in power,” he told supporters on a video conference call yesterday.
Starmer says he is a socialist driven by the desire to reduce inequality, but his pragmatic approach has attracted support from centrists in the party – and suspicions on the left.
‘Bad blood and mistrust’
Labour grew out of the trade union movement but moved to the political centre under former prime minister Tony Blair, who was in office between 1997 and 2007.
Corbyn had spent a lifetime on the sidelines because of his left-wing views, and his election as leader in 2015, on the back of a huge surge in party membership, was a shock.
MPs and party members have been locked in an ideological battle ever since.
“There’s really a lot of bad blood and mistrust,” said Steven Fielding, a political expert at the University of Nottingham.
“The first challenge (for Starmer) will be to put a team together that at least looks like it has the ability to unify the party.”
Winning back voters who defected to the Conservatives is also top of the list if Labour has any hope of victory at the next election, currently scheduled for 2024.
Brexit was a toxic issue for the party, torn between eurosceptic supporters in many northern English towns and pro-EU voters in the big cities such as London.
Starmer was opposed to Brexit and played a key role in moving Labour to support a second referendum on leaving the European Union.
However, voters were not convinced and Johnson took Britain out of the bloc on 31 January.
Coronavirus challenge
The coronavirus outbreak has brought a more immediate challenge.
Johnson’s government has imposed draconian curbs on public movement to try to stop the spread – measures backed by Labour, although it successfully pressed for more parliamentary scrutiny of new police powers.
The Conservatives have also promised eye-watering sums to keep businesses and individuals afloat, wading into traditional Labour territory.
In response, Johnson’s popularity ratings have shot up.
A YouGov survey last week found that 55% of the public had a favourable opinion of him, up from 43% a week earlier.
Some 72% thought the government was doing well – including a majority of Labour voters.
Ministers have been on the back foot in recent days, however, over the lack of testing for coronavirus and the protective equipment for healthcare staff.
Labour has been pressing the issues, and Starmer said this would continue.
“My instinct will be to be constructive but to ask the difficult questions,” he told the Guardian podcast this week.
With reporting from Sean Murray
Single people have it tougher in society – if housebound that becomes worse. Good to see an article on this issue.
Oh please, give me a break. It was a bit of snow FFS!!!!
@Ciaran Fairley: You read that whole article in less than three minutes? Impressive.
Tell that the someone living alone who was recently bereaved.
@Glenn Caulfield: I seriously doubt that two days of snow was a significant additional stress factor in that case.
Snowflake seems an apt word these days
@Dara O’Brien: oh aye I’m sure you both know way better than the fully qualified pyschotherapist. Her point isn’t that snow can cause significant stress and loneliness, but magnify stress and loneliness that’s already there.
@Dara O’Brien: I myself suffer from depression and found a lot of the points in the article rang true. I personally could not leave the house for 4 days with poor conditions as i live rurally rather than the 2. Just because you have no empathy or understanding for those who suffer with their mental health doesnt give you the right to start attaching more labels to people. If youve nothing nice to say and all that
@Neal Ireland Hello.: It took you longer than three minutes to read that? Worrying.
@Anomander: hahaha exactly what I was thinking.
I loved the peace
@Ashling Fenton: I loved the peace too
The is a flip side for those of us for whom dealing with people is an absolute chore, time to actually relax without having to make an excuse, time when you can leave the mask off and save your energy without the relentless oppression of people telling you to cheer up because you’re not projecting a mindless obliviously happy persona and messing with their fragile superficial perceptions
@Brendan Gordon: Totally…I went out on Friday and people were out walking their dogs in the snow, there was little or no traffic on the roads as people weren’t hurrying to get to work or to school, people seemed happy to get away from the rat race for a few days.
@Fifty Shades of Sé: because people were walking around my estate instead of driving, I connected with neighbours I barely knew I had.i remember as a kid walking to the shops with my mam. She’d stop every few minutes to chat with neighbours, it used to drive me mad. I’m convinced that the car culture we have nowadays contributes to social isolation and lack of community spirit: now if you need a pint of milk you hop in the car to drive a couple of hundred meters down the road, go to the self service And you don’t even interact with shop staff. And yes , I do it myself.
@Dermot Lane: Very well put, economic and technological advancements over the past two decades have certainly lead to a seismic shift in culture towards communal interaction, the price of progress however can be the sacrifice of good values.
Times like this people turn to God…..as answer to the emptiness….
@John003: how does that work? If a few days of time dragging slowly and in terminal boredom is enough to induce depression, surely eternity would be a nightmare?
@John003: Really. Which one?
@John003: Peace be with you brother
It’s not all that bad it’s a bit of snow and you can’t get out for a few days hardly the end of the world now is.
I a biker 365 days of the year and i haven’t been able to get outside the gate yet but the world and all it’s madness will still be there waiting for me whenever I do manage to get out.
At this time 2 years ago we had the recent Dublin level of snow in the west. Being west of the M50 and west of Shannon, did not make the news so these issues were not talked about. It was, as the first comment reminds us, a bit of snow.
Very good article, isolation be it self imposed or circumstantial has long term detriment to mental health well being along with stress and anxiety. The past week more than most in recent times has highlighted the benefits of community interaction and human contact can counteract such problems, maybe when looking for solutions it’s time to get back to basics.
Very good comments. Very relatable.
It’s great if you’re an introvert though or so I hear :)
The doctor would have been well served if she added those navigating homelessness in family hubs, emergency accommodation, and on the streets; and those living in fear of losing their homes to VF, respossession, or extortionate rising rents to her list of those whose daily stresses are amplified by the isolation they bring…on a daily basis, along with the emptiness of endless time…. no matter what the weather.
People also need to learn to be alone with thier thoughts, to easy now distract yourself with social media if have 2 mins to spare, guilty of it myself.
Love to travel and part of reason is I’m unplugged and have time alone with my thoughts. That can actually be a joy rather than a problem if allow yourself engage with your inner self rather than seek external distraction.
Realise some have genuine isolation, and that needs addressing, but for some is self taught and can be Untaught
People belonging to big happy families where there’s a bit o’ land, a horse or two, a jeep and no one can even spell “rent,” wouldn’t know which end of the gas/electricity meter to put the coin in. Would that be the thing you use to measure the tyre depth? The same folk who laugh at mental illness and marginalised lives and think human trafficking is what the lollipop lady does.
Their frame of reference blinds them to the misery other people go through and, understandably, the same happens vice versa. Hence so much living in a parallel universe. It’s all bollocks really, all we can try and do is make the best of a bad job…
It says a lot about us as people if we can’t handle a few days indoors
Ooops when I said “from experience” I meant experience of loneliness DEFINITELY not prison. Lol
I think it was George Bernard Shaw who said “There is nothing worse than an endless holiday. I know from experience to quote tihe guy in Shawshank Redemptiin who says “the nights here are long….. time can stretch out like a razor blade” am not sure if it’s word for word but it sums loneliness up aptly.
I can only quote from Shawahank Redemption when the guy described his feelings of loneliness and isolation “prison time is slooooow time….in here time can draw out like a blade”
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