Keir nearly quit over ‘kick in the guts’ 2021 by-election
Wife helped him stay strong
KEIR Starmer thought about quitting as Labour leader after a by-election defeat, a biography has revealed.
Mr Starmer felt the loss of Hartlepool in 2021 as a personal rejection, the book reports.
The seat was previously held by Labour at every election since 1974 but the Tories, then led by Boris Johnson, won it with a majority of almost 7,000.
In the book by the former Labour adviser Tom Baldwin, Mr Starmer says: “I felt like I had been kicked in the guts. The result was terrible.
“I had a moment where I thought, ‘We are not going to be able to do this’.” The book even says Mr Starmer told his top advisers he was going to resign. Former aide Chris Ward said: “Keir kept saying that he felt he would have to go, that the result showed the party was going backwards and he saw it as a personal rejection. “I told him it was far too soon for that kind of thing. “But it was a rocky few hours.”
Mr Ward also explained: “Keir regards his role solely as a means to an end of achieving change.
“If he becomes the obstacle to it, he’ll get out of the way.”
Mr Starmer, who yesterday spoke at the Scottish Labour conference in Glasgow, is also quoted as saying: “I’m not fulfilling some lifelong dream here. I could happily work in the bookshop or something.”
A pre-publication extract of the book reveals the Labour leader’s wife, Victoria, was among those who urged him not to act too hastily in the wake of the disappointing Hartlepool result.
After a remarkable turnaround, opinion polls now show Labour on course to form a government after the next general election. Just days ago the party demolished massive Conservative majorities at two by-elections, in Wellingborough, Northants, and Kingswood, Glos.
The book, published later this month, also includes a quote from Mr Starmer’s powerful chief of staff, Sue Gray, a former civil servant. The ex-Cabinet Office Second Permanent Secretary tackled rumours she was a spy during a career break in the late 1980s where she ran a pub in Northern Ireland.
She insisted to author Mr Baldwin: “I’m definitely not a spy – and no, I never have been.”
WHEN Tony Blair won power back on that magical night in 1997, Steve Rotheram was a “brickie in Kirkby”, his home town on Merseyside.
Today, as he looks forward to Keir Starmer achieving a similar election triumph for Labour, Steve is the Liverpool Metro Mayor and has power and influence – which he intends to use.
He says: “We’re trying to schedule a call in to Keir for one minute past 10 on election night.” And what he will demand of the Labour leader is action to tackle the North/South divide that, despite the Tories’ “levelling up” rhetoric, is wider than ever after their 14 years in government.
He says: “The differential between the North and South here is worse than it was during reunification in Germany. So the divide that has happened over the last 14 years is now worse.
“That’s just mind-blowing. After the reunification of East and West Germany they put a tax on the West Germans that was used for the East German side to bring them up to the same sort of levels.” In his 13th-floor office overlooking the Mersey, he speaks fervently about a decent deal for the North. Pointing to the docks, he says: “That port once traded more than 50% of the world’s trade. We were pioneers in this part of the country. If the government had been serious about levelling up, they would have funded things here, the same as happened in the South for decades.”
A report in 2022, titled “State of the North”, showed that, in the five years to 2019/20, London received the equivalent of £12,147 per person, while in the North, it was only £8,125. Treasury data
showed that if investment in the North had matched that in London over the five years, it would have meant an extra £61billion for infrastructure and skills.
Don’t get Steve started on rail and the lack of investment and the scrapping of the northern leg of HS2.
Choosing his words carefully, he says: “I think the general feeling is that people are particularly ‘peeved’ about being left behind yet again.
“The only way you’re going to balance the country’s economy is by the places with latent potential, like here, being given the opportunity to grow.
“I’ve never moaned about the likes of West Midlands and Tees Valley – Tory areas – getting access to Cabinet ministers and getting some additional funding. That’s that’s the world we live in.
“What needs to happen is that we can have a similar source of access so that we can put our cases forward for investments in our cities for 14 years. Now it will be time for the balance.”
Now 62, Steve fondly recalls being a toddler during the 1966 election victory of Harold Wilson – who knew his dad, Labour councillor Harry Rotheram.
He then speaks about two controversial Tory figures: Margaret Thatcher, and Michael Heseltine who had a different kind of impact on Liverpool.
He speaks warmly of Heseltine, who as Environment Secretary is credited with kickstarting the city’s regeneration after the Toxteth riots in 1981. He says: “I like him. A couple of years ago he said he wouldn’t have a frontline job in politics again, other than the Metro Mayor of the Liverpool City Region. I sent him a text and
I said, ‘Hezza, keep your hands off my job’.
“He sent me the most glorious response. He said, ‘I can assure you that I cannot foresee the circumstances by which I will put my name forward for your role.
“You may remember this was the same assurance I gave to a certain lady’, meaning Margaret Thatcher. That was class.”
But he describes Thatcher, who Heseltine challenged for the Tory leadership in 1990, as the “devil incarnate”.
“In the 80s she hated this area. She spoke about not spending the money on the stony grounds of Liverpool and about the ‘managed decline’ of this proud city, once the second city of empire.”
Steve has no intention of managing decline in Liverpool. Again looking out at the Mersey, he says: “The Industrial Revolution didn’t start in London, you know. “That river out there has been the lifeblood of our fortune for centuries. That river, through the tide, could change this area and the country’s energy security.
“The unique shape of the Mersey means that – apart from the River Severn – it’s the best river in the country to be utilised for tidal power.”
He also wants to build a film industry in the city, converting the iconic art deco Littlewoods Building into a TV and film studio.
He declares: “We want to be the ‘Hollywood of the North’.”
Differential between North and South is worse than at the reunification of Germany
STEVE ROTHERAM LIVERPOOL CITY REGION METRO MAYOR