COMMENTARY

I WOULD like to congratulate Sir Keir Starmer on his decisive victory.what can we expect?

Will his leadership mark a radical departure?

The Conservative Party certainly should not be complacent. Sir Keir will almost certainly be more competent than Jeremy Corbyn and preside over a more united Labour Party in Parliament. On both counts he has a very low bar to jump.

However, his election shows that Labour is still wedded to everything that led working-class voters to desert them. Just like Corbyn, he represents the London-centric Labour Party which helped to turn much of the North blue at the last election.

He has a reputation for being liberal on crime and, as shadow Brexit secretary, presided over Labour voting to overturn the EU referendum result, a policy which proved fatal at the general election.

His leadership pitch has been pretty much to continue with the policies of Corbyn and he still seems wedded to free movement of people across the EU.

It looks as if Sir Keir has decided to appeal to the same group of voters as Corbyn, and that will make it very difficult to win back working-class voters.

So whilst he will almost certainly be a sterner opponent, if Boris Johnson continues with the Blue Collar Conservative agenda, there will be no reason at all for those people who voted Conservative for the first time to go back to the Labour Party.