Keir Starmer: Labour must 'get serious about winning'

Trade unions have been at the forefront of those criticising Sir Keir and the direction the Labour Party has taken. Labour’s single biggest donor, Unite the Union, has failed to make any donations to the party since Sir Keir was elected leader in April. The Union’s General Secretary, Len McCluskey, has already pitted himself as Sir Keir’s enemy, having retracted 10 percent of Labour’s funding in October, around £150,000.

And while senior figures like Mr McCluskey are making their presence known through physical actions, others, like Paul Embery, are engaged in an ideological war against Sir Keir and modern Labour.

Mr Embery, a prominent trade unionist, hit headlines last year when he was sacked from the national executive of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) after speaking in favour of Brexit at a Leave Means Leave rally.

The FBU official policy is to oppose leaving the EU.

The trade unionist has since battled against the metropolitan liberal elite that has moulded itself around the Labour Party, his goal to help Labour win back its so-called “Red Wall” that fell to the Conservative Party in the 2019 general election.

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Reclaiming these seats, Mr Embery believes, is the only way for Sir Keir and Labour to win back power

Yet to do this, Mr Embery told Express.co.uk that both Sir Keir and Labour must drop the “woke” culture it has adopted over a period of years.

This, he says, stymies debate, neglects swathes of the country and ultimately isolates working class communities, pushing them towards more culturally conservative political parties.

He explained: “It’s become really dangerous because whereas once upon a time people would disagree and would say ‘I disagree with you’, more and more often people now say ‘you mustn’t say that’ or ‘that is offensive’.

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“Views that were, until fairly recently, perfectly mainstream and acceptable, and conventional wisdom in some cases are now almost effectively outlawed.

“There’s a real authoritarianism that has crept into the Left and I think it’s now infecting large parts of the country including many of our public institutions and corporations.

“And, because it’s being driven by the Left, the Left gets associated with it quite justifiably, and people don’t like it.

“People in these working class communities don’t like it and so the party has got to move away from some of this rubbish because it’s damaging.”

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Mr Embery conceded that Sir Keir appeared to be working towards leaving this “woke” framework.

It is true that in recent months the Labour leader has attempted to buff-up his party’s outlook on patriotism and national pride, something former leader Jeremy Corbyn struggled with.

Sir Keir has said he wants Labour to be “proud of being patriotic,” and used his party conference speech in September to tell voters: “I ask you: take another look at Labour. We’re under new leadership. We love this country as you do.”

He has also harnessed interviews to express his love of the country – picking ‘Three Lions’ by Baddiel, Skinner and The Lightning Seeds as one of his BBC Desert Island Discs.

And while Mr Embery said it was hard to gauge whether rhetoric like this was genuine, nonetheless, he said the Labour leader was doing “the right thing”.

Sir Keir’s newfound Brexit policy is another hint at the leader’s desperation to win the trust of the working class as he pushes his party to accept the Government’s Brexit deal.

Mr Embery said that for Labour, “there’s no route back to power that does not pass through those Red Wall seats and secure the votes of people in them”.

The Labour leader, however, may still face a tough challenge in persuading his party to back a Brexit deal.

Backbench Labour MPs warn that up to 60 could rebel if Sir Keir insists they support the Government rather than allowing a free vote.

Reports suggest that Sir Keir is willing to reshuffle his cabinet as a way of containing the rebels – a brief insight into how much he wants to put the Brexit debate to bed and begin the road to 2024.

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