Starmer’s speech location shows Labour think a Blair-style Kent revival is possible

Good morning. It’s the day of Keir Starmer’s fifth and final mission speech, which will focus on “opportunity”. After being introduced by Shadow Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson, the Labour leader will vow to shatter the “class ceiling” in a speech that is expected to draw on his own background. Policy pledges are expected to focus on new early years targets, curriculum reform, and cutting child poverty, among other things. The speech will be streaming live from 10:25am, and you can watch it here.

In an article for the Times published last night, Starmer pledged that speaking skills would be an important part of Labour’s reformed curriculum: “The ability to speak well and express yourself should be something every child is entitled to and should master.” The Labour leader contends: “If reading opens up a world of imagination and possibility, then speaking and listening opens up a lifetime of empowerment.”

Starmer will be speaking later this morning in Gillingham, Kent. This is inMedway, where Labour took the council in May and where the Labour leader went to give his post-local elections celebration speech. It’s also, far from unrelatedly, an area currently represented by three Tory MPs, but where Labour fancy their chances in all three seats. Selections are underway in Gillingham and Rainham (where 2014 Rochester and Strood by-election candidate Naushabah Khan has announced she’s on the shortlist) and in Rochester and Strood, where members will choose later this week between local councillor Alex Paterson, nurse Kevin McKenna, and Lauren Edwards, also a local councillor. Local council leader Vince Maple has confirmed that he will not seek parliamentary selection.

In other selection news, Imogen Walker has been selected as Labour’s candidate in Lanark and Hamilton East, a long-time Labour seat that was taken by the SNP’s Angela Crawley in 2015. Walker, who was previously a councillor in Lambeth, is married to the party’s campaign head Morgan McSweeney.

More troublingly, LGA has released the results of a survey which found that more and more councillors report feeling unsafe in their roles. Some 54% say abuse aimed at them has increased since they were elected and 82% said they felt at risk some of the time in their roles.

This morning has also seen the release of the standards committee report into MP Chris Pincher. It’s recommended that the Tamworth MP (elected as a Tory, he has sat as an independent since the suspension of the whip a year ago) be suspended from parliament for 8 weeks– long enough to potentially trigger a by-election. Pincher had a 20k majority in 2019, but Labour was only 12k behind in 2017, and given the severity of Pincher’s misconduct – stranger things have happened.

Meanwhile the TUC has waded into the row over the mass closure of railway ticket offices, with general secretary Paul Nowak saying the move is an attempt at “squeezing out more cash for shareholders by cutting rail services to their bare bones”. Nowak committed to “work with passenger groups to oppose these plans and to rescue our railways from the privatisation and profiteering that is destroying them.” Shadow Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has also commented, saying that the Conservatives were “ducking and diving from scrutiny” and that “railroading this decision in just three weeks, without proper consideration for staff and vulnerable passengers, only risks exacerbating the managed decline of the rail network”. But she notably did not pledge to oppose the plans per se or reverse them.

And, finally, the New Statesman carries an interesting story of apparent discontent among senior Labour MPs over how much air time Wes Streeting is being given to promote his new memoir, in which the Shadow Health Secretary details his upbringing. Let’s hope talking about his background endears Keir Starmer to voters more than it endears Wes Streeting to his colleagues…

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