The leader of the left-wing Labour party has announced that he is dropping the ten policy promises he made to become leader, as he and his colleagues chomp at the bit to seize power from the Tories.
Keir Starmer, the leader of Britain’s leftist Labour Party, has announced that he is scrapping ten hard-left promises regarding what he and his ministers would do when in government.
The promises — which promised initiatives on things ranging from climate change to diversity — had previously been described as “socialist” by some critics, and largely seemed to keep continuity with the party’s previous hardline leftist leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
However, in what appears to be another part of Starmer’s attempt to move the party back to Britain’s political centre on many issues, especially those to do with the economy, the Labour leader has now confirmed that all ten pledges he made to become leader are now dead in the water.
“A lot has happened in the past two years… we’ve been through Covid we have debt on a scale we’ve not seen — you know — for a long, long time if ever before,” he said, arguing that Labour had to make choices over what it really wanted to do once in power.
When asked to clarify whether he was in fact dumping the promises he made when becoming leader of the party, Starmer responded with a clear “yes”, saying that “the financial situation has changed”.
Starmer’s declaration that his previous promises are now void could mark a serious political turn for Labour, with the promises having included commitments on trying to stay in the EU’s common travel area, hiking taxes, and pushing for the nationalisation of various British industries.
The move has sparked massive outcry amongst the hard left in Britain, with one leftist pundit branding the Labour leader as “fundamentally dishonest”.
“Starmer is a serial liar who says one thing one day and another thing the next,” he wrote, complaining that Starmer made his ten pledges during COVID, and could not use the pandemic as an excuse to get out of them.
However, while those to the left of Starmer may not be happy about it, it seems like the party head is set on bringing the Labour party closer to the centre on a number of issues seemingly in the hopes of chipping away at the support of left-leaning Tory voters.
For example, Starmer has been pushing the party into accepting a more patriotic outlook on Britain, encouraging those within the party to do their “patriotic duty” by openly celebrating the Queen’s Jubilee earlier this year, while also backing the display of the union flag.
More recently, the party head has also ordered front bench Labour MPs not to join picket lines during upcoming strike action in the country, saying that “a government doesn’t go on picket lines, a government tries to resolve disputes”.
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