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Starmer has made progress, but's it's been too little and too slow

No one who nominated Corbyn should be anywhere near the front bench

April 7, 2022 09:49
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HARLOW, ENGLAND - NOVEMBER 05: Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn (L) and Keir Starmer, Shadow Secretary of State for Exiting the EU look on prior to delivering a Brexit speech at the Harlow Hotel on November 5, 2019 in Harlow, England. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)
4 min read

Keir Starmer has clearly made some progress during his first two years as Labour leader, but it has been agonisingly slow – and with a mountain to climb before the election you’d have thought he would have no time to waste.

He won the leadership with a left-wing platform, promising to combine Jeremy Corbyn’s policies with his professionalism.

Unfortunately, his first stab at assembling a shadow cabinet included the hopeless and the anonymous. Even the competent were in the wrong jobs. Eventually he put together a more credible team with decent people like Wes Streeting, Pat McFadden and Bridget Phillipson who had all consistently spoken out against Corbyn, but others still struggle to make an impact.

He promised to “tear antisemitism out by its roots” but progress was slow to start with and some offenders still receive temporary suspensions instead of being kicked out for good. The Campaign Against Antisemitism’s recent survey showed almost nine out of ten of British Jews think Labour still has more to do to tackle anti-Jewish racism so it is clearly too early to claim, as Starmer does, that the party has "closed the door" on this scandal.