Who decides which “ordinary people” get a hearing? Which studies are examined? Without parties or partisanship, what prevents a handful of dominant individuals railroading the others into a false consensus?
After Brexit and Covid, five Prime Ministers and a cost-of-living crisis, a war in Ukraine and a war in Gaza, the Labour leader wishes to appeal to a weary electorate with a vision of tedium.
Though for all his efforts to place his tanks on Tory lawns, the former editor of Socialist Alternatives still struggled to speak like a Conservative in several crucial areas.
Like it or not, in many areas, we need a radical Labour government – or at least one willing to take the tough decisions the Conservatives have ducked.
If ministers are going to start holding senior mandarins publicly accountable for their alleged failures, it is inevitable that those officials are going to start publicly defending their records.
Above all, they shouldn’t become preoccupied with Woke to the exclusion of everything else. This is the trap that many Labour backbenchers and much of the Left is falling into.
Party activists could be forgiven for wondering if he would now rather have Starmer in Downing Street than Sunak.
Depending on ACOBA’s recommendations, there is the possibility of Gray being unable to work with Labour in the run-up to, or even after, their transition to government.
The former Prime Minister offered a professional defence of the unwise assurances he gave to the Commons in December 2021.
“The appointment is just another brick in the wall for viewers to say you don’t work for us you work for yourself,” warns the former Conservative Party Chairman.
One need not think Conservatives are right to mistrust the Civil Service to recognise that a move which fuels such feelings is dangerous.
With the news that Sue Gray has resigned from the civil service and has been offered the job of Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, we present Andrew Gimson’s profile of her from 2017.
The Scottish Secretary, understated in his public utterances, “often makes the wittiest interjections in Cabinet discussions”.
Is he fated to be a fire-fighter, a leader grappling with crisis? Or can he find the political space to deliver a more personal message – perhaps to do with education?
Many of Tory MPs will be sick and tired of the self-reverential obsequies attached to the Committee’s deliberation and verdict – and of the hysteria, hate, vitriol and venom directed at a man without whom many would never have had the opportunity to serve in Parliament.