How to win back the voters of the “Red wall” (“Red wall”), that historic left-wing stronghold in northern England, who voted en masse for Boris Johnson in 2019? How can we convince them that it is time to elect a labor prime minister after more than ten years of Conservative government? Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labor Party, gave some answers, at the end of the party’s annual conference in Brighton (south of England), Wednesday, September 29: by trying to close the leftist parenthesis of his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, to reposition the formation at the center. And taking the opposite view of Boris Johnson, “A showman who has nothing more to show”, he attacked.
The task is not easy for this 59-year-old leader, ex-attorney general for England and Wales, who arrived at the head of the party in the midst of the Covid-19 epidemic, in April 2020, serious but without much charisma. If he insisted on extracting it “Modest” (father skilled worker, mother nurse), Keir Starmer does not at all have the profile of Mr. Corbyn, experienced in far-left militancy (anti-imperialism, anti-NATO, pro-Palestine), which had aroused a real fervor when he was elected head of the party in 2015.
In Brighton, Mr. Starmer wanted to present his supposed flaws as qualities and give depth to his character. “When in 2003 I was working in Northern Ireland [à la mise en place] of the peace treaty [ayant mis fin aux “Troubles”], Boris Johnson was a guest of the show “Top Gear” and admitted that behind his character of moron, “he may only be hiding a moron”. “ If he also insisted on the serious logistical crises that Mr. Johnson is facing (gas stations without gasoline, empty shelves), Mr. Starmer, on the other hand, did not hesitate to take up purely conservative themes. “Family and work” are the “Two rocks of my life”, he thus affirmed.
Critics of the pro-Corbyn wing
His lieutenants were even more explicit: Rachel Reeves, Chancellor of the Exchequer of her “shadow cabinet” defended a “pro-business” vision, and Nick Thomas-Symonds, inside, ensured that “The tory party is not the party of law and order” and welcomed the presence, in the conference hall during his speech, of the president of the main police union in the country.
“We will not make any promises that we cannot keep”, added Mr Starmer – a transparent criticism of the program based on nationalizations and numerous investments defended by Mr Corbyn in the 2019 general election, where Labor had one of the worst results in its history. Finally, Mr. Starmer paid tribute to the results of “New” Labor (“The minimum wage, the reduction of child poverty, the reduction of 75% of the homeless”), without mentioning the name of the former prime minister, Tony Blair, still very unpopular for having drawn the country into the second Iraq war.
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