Starmer is a letdown as leader

Keir Starmer is such a disappointment. The raft of recent policy announcements and reversals is just so…conservative. As a former lefty, activist lawyer myself, I had high hopes for Starmer – after all he provided legal support in Mclibel case back in the late 90’s. As a law student I looked up to him then, but now I just see someone who is trying to out-tory the Tories to get into power.

Starmer announced that building on greenbelt land will be given the go-ahead ‘backing the builders, not the blockers’. Here in Kent, too many villages and towns have already seen large-scale developments take place without the community infrastructure needed, like GP surgeries, nurseries and schools, not to mention bus services and cycling and walking networks.

We need councils and national government to work together to deliver homes people can afford to rent and buy, where we need them not allow developers to chase everlarger profits and ignore local needs. We need to protect valuable green space, reduce climate emissions, tackle fuel poverty and provide genuinely affordable, well-insulated houses in the right

places.

Starmer’s U-turn on his commitment to scrap university tuition fees is betraying young people who already have low wages, high rents, rising cost of living and the climate and biodiversity chaos to contend with. Higher education is a public good and should be properly funded by government. Students in England pay some of the highest fees in the world, whilst university education is free in many countries, like Scotland, Germany and Sweden to name few. We shouldn’t be saddling our next generation of leaders with decades of debt.

By refusing to support proportional representation (PR), Starmer is opposing his own party membership and trade unions including Unison, Unite, and USDAW, all of whom back a move to PR. A PR system aims to ensure that every vote counts by matching parliamentarian numbers to percentage support for parties. England and Belarus are the only two countries in Europe that maintain the First Past The Post system. Starmer would like to keep us in that tired old paradigm. The time has come for progressive parties to work cooperatively, to build a better society, to shift the focus from endless economic growth to living sustainably, within planetary boundaries, in a society where everyone’s views are represented. That can’t be done by trying to outtory the Tories.

Christine Oliver