The leader of the British Labor Party, Keir Starmer, carried out this Monday an expected remodeling of his “shadow” Government ahead of the next legislative elections in the United Kingdom, scheduled for late 2024 or early 2025, which aims to show the British what the first Labor Executive would be like since Gordon Brown left 10 Downing Street in 2010.
The restructuring places Labor’s number two, Angela Rayner, as eventual deputy prime minister, in case Starmer’s people have the capacity to form a Government after the elections. Rayner will also replace Lisa Nandy at the head of the territorial rebalancing portfolio in the future cabinet, which the latest surveys take for granted.
But the changes have been reflected by the rise of the right wing of the party, that closest to the figure of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, to the detriment of the sector further to the left. That would explain the return of the greatest exponent of the so-called “third way”, the political theory outlined by the sociologist Anthony Giddens that defends the conjunction between progressivism and free markets, a kind of socioliberalism. In recent months, Blair has appeared with Starmer at several events. He had been away from militancy since he left office in 2007.
Since taking over leadership of the party in April 2020, Keir Starmer has given a major boost to the center and strived to turn the page on the Jeremy Corbyn era, his very left-wing predecessor, accused of allowing anti-Semitism to flourish within the party. In this sense, Starmer promised in an interview with the Daily Mail that he would not raise the income tax if he wins the elections.
The reorganization comes at a time when, according to the BBC, the former senior official Sue Gray, who investigated the scandal of Downing Street parties in which anti-Covid health restrictions were breached, has taken up her position as Labor Party chief of staff. The announcement of her move to Labor sparked accusations of bias from Conservative ranks.
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