'Starmer is safe for now, but must do more than wrapping himself in the Union Jack'

Fighting on two fronts, Keir Starmer wrapping himself in the Union Jack to combat both Nigel Farage and Andy Burnham is a Prime Minister refusing to go quietly.

Branding Farage and Reform’s vile mass deportation plan of people working and living legally in Britain as racist was cheered by Cabinet Ministers frustrated that Starmertoo often bit his tongue in the past to avoid confronting Farage and delivered that awful, regretted “Island of Strangers” speech.

Championing what my Mirror campaigning colleague Ros Wynne-Jones inspiringly calls a “nation of neighbours” is a fundamental battle of values, what Starmer terms the “politics of patriotic renewal” against Farage’s “politics of predatory grievance”.

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It’s worrying he needed to be prodded, pushed and to some extent shamed by a backlash into speaking out loudly and clearly but he is undeniably in a better position, morally as well as politically.

As for Burnham, if a consensus exists at Labour’s Liverpool conference, it’s the King of the North went too far in throwing down the gauntlet to Starmer by making abundantly clear his desire to replace the PM.

Allies of Burnham privately acknowledged that. His critique may be correct, one argued, the need for Labour to produce an engaging vision as relevant as ever, stressed another, and the Greater Manchester’s Mayor policy answers - wealth tax, public ownership, etc - attractive to many, asserted a third.

Rocking the conference boat, however, isn’t always popular with a hoi polloi taking time off work and paying exorbitant hotel prices to rub-shoulders with party bigwigs and enjoy a Left-wing political festival.

Starmer is secure for now but either he raises his game and improves Labour’s fortunes during the next 12 months or in September 2026 it may not be only Burnham posing as an alternative to improve the party’s prospects.

Suddenly adopting with Farage the “patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel” approach of 18th Century Tory scribbler Samuel Johnson who denounced false, fake promotion of the country won’t be to everybody’s taste.

Nor is allowing Farage or anybody else for that matter, particularly convicted thug Stephen Lennon aka Tommy Robinson, the richest Far Right agitator in history from monetising hate, to steal the flag.

Unfurling the red, white and blue doesn’t put food on a table or build a single house, of course.

Great policies do. So allowing reviving the NHS, new job rights, rail renationalisation, breakfast clubs, childcare, free school meals and a long menu of improvements to people’s lives to be overshadowed by winter fuel and free posh specs mistakes is what really proved disastrous. As is the vision gaping hole.

Starmer loses the external fight with Farage and Burnham plus a cast of worried thousands will take the internal fight to him. The stakes are high personally because increasingly hostile Reform is a threat to the British way of life. At stake is far, far more than who is PM.

Lindsey plant fight

Oil refinery workers fighting to save the Lindsey plant in North Lincolnshire highlight how the Government picks and chooses which companies to bail out.

Hundreds of jobs are at risk after owner Prax Group was placed into liquidation in June and families will be devastated if it isn’t rescued either by a private buyer or the UK Government.

Unite union leaders lobbying Ministers in Liverpool have a case when they argue steelmaking in Scunthorpe was saved by the Government effectively taking over the plant and it is guaranteeing a £1.5billion loan to save car jobs at Jaguar Land Rover and in the supply chain.

So why not a package for the North Killingholme works? Picking winners also risks backing losers but when Labour’s straining to convince workers it is the real deal and Reform are a bunch of Thatcherite frauds, which the Hard Right party is, then Labour putting money where its mouth is might deservedly pay electoral dividends.

Taxi for Philip...

My dad, a coal miner, would’ve called crazy Chris Philip an oxygen waster because the Tory screamer adds little or nothing to public debate.

Kemi Badenoch’s henchman was hyperventilating again over the weekend, this time frothing at the mouth over a taxi company’s profits soaring ten-fold to £590,000 in 2023-24 from £52,000 in 2022-23 after winning a £4million contract to ferry migrants around the country.

“This is disgusting,” fumed Philp. “Taxpayers are being fleeced by the Government to ferry illegal immigrants around the country.”

OK, who was a Minister in the Government that did the deal? You’ve guessed, Chris Philp. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether he’s disgusting.

I'm against Starmer’s digital ID cards on practical grounds when any scheme would prove expensive and bad employers will still exploit workers and migrants, continuing to pay under the minimum wage instead of turning away desperate folk without them.

Yet a tin foil hat-wearing protester outside Labour’s shindig didn’t take kindly when I pointed out private corporations, not Governments, are a greater threat to our privacy.

His, mine and your mobile phone, bank and store cards, social media use, laptop browsing and even what we watch on TV are all tags. Big Brother is more likely to be a Silicon Valley squillionaire bro rather than an MI5 spook.

Going up

Gone but not forgotten, Angela Rayner isn’t at Labour’s conference but still earned the day’s loudest applause when cabinet minister Steve Reed’s speech hailed the absent “working class hero” who laid the foundations for more house building.

Going down

MASS deportations of people living and working legally, a Swan Fake smear and a cowardly refusal to criticise Donald Trump’s quack doctor view of paracetamol leads me to wonder whether Nigel Farage’s popularity has peaked and the decent majority will revolt against his vile lunacy.

Speaker's corner

“The rule of law is under threat from populists, whose ineffective solutions would harm working-class people.” Labour legal eagle Richard Starmer is spot on when victims of the mob rule fuelled by the likes of Nigel Farage and Robert Jenrick would be the very communities these Hard Right extremists incite. Let’s call them out.