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Morning Star Editorial: Starmer may fall, but the right’s grip on Labour won’t be broken from within

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmer-may-fall-rights-grip-labour-wont-be-broken-within

 Prime Minister Keir Starmer departs 10 Downing Street, London, to attend Prime Minister’s Questions at the Houses of Parliament, November 12, 2025

IF KEIR STARMER intended to stave off a leadership challenge by advertising his readiness to fight one, he has miscalculated.

All his intervention has done is placed the question of his leadership at the top of MPs’ minds.

Perhaps identifying Wes Streeting as a possible challenger was intended to frighten the left away from triggering a contest — since Streeting is even further right than Starmer.

In practice it simply showcases the Prime Minister’s insecurity and the toxic culture Streeting accurately describes in Downing Street — where the government briefs against its own, and a leadership that has always relied on bans and expulsions to maintain authority descends into a “circular firing squad,” to use the ever eloquent Barry Gardiner’s phrase. Unlike Starmer, MPs might reflect, Streeting has never pretended to be on the left and as a Blairite true believer might at least try to govern through persuasion rather than fear.

Nobody should fear challenging Starmer: his government is as inept as it is cruel and is paving the way for a far-right Reform UK regime.

But Streeting is no solution. The Health Secretary would be a cosmetic change, no more: he’s wedded to the same policies of privatisation and cuts that have wrecked our public services and national infrastructure. Starmer loyalists point to the long death agony of the last Tory government as evidence that switching leader doesn’t help — and it won’t, without dramatic changes in Labour policy.

And that’s a problem. Starmer’s leadership exists to prevent change, not deliver it: its whole mission has been the destruction of Corbynism and the threat of a socialist-led Labour Party. That project was endorsed by the overwhelming majority of Labour MPs even before last year’s election brought in cohorts of carefully vetted conformists.

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Article continues at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/starmer-may-fall-rights-grip-labour-wont-be-broken-within

Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage's chasing the racist bigot vote.
Keir Starmer refuses to be outcnuted by Nigel Farage’s chasing the racist bigot vote.
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the "hard times".
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves - the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership is intensely relaxed about assaulting those least able to defend themselves – the very poorest and most vulnerable.
Continue ReadingMorning Star Editorial: Starmer may fall, but the right’s grip on Labour won’t be broken from within

Keir Starmer Used Dodgy Figures to Claim 4,000 New Jobs. In Fact, It’s Only 400

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https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/04/keir-starmer-used-dodgy-figures-to-claim-4000-new-jobs-in-fact-its-only-400/

A conceptual rendering of the proposed AI datacentre. Image: Northumberland County Council

Does he think we’re stupid?

When Keir Starmer announced the creation of a £10 billion AI datacentre at Blyth in Northumberland last year, it was with a promise that the site would bring 4,000 jobs to the north-east of England.

For an ex-mining town, once home to two coal power stations, this was welcome news. The area had been let down once before: the new “artificial intelligence datacentre” will open on a site once destined to host Britishvolt, the startup planning to employ 3,000 people making batteries for electric vehicles that collapsed spectacularly in 2023.

However, it has since emerged that the true figure for job creation is closer to just 300 to 400 permanent staff, a tenth of what Starmer promised. Other media outlets have noted the yawning gap between Starmer’s hype and the disappointing reality. But the apparent willingness of the government to launder dodgy figures provided by the PR machine of a rapacious private equity firm has not been scrutinised – until now.

When asked in January by Labour MP Chi Onwurah what the evidential basis for the 4,000 claim was in a parliamentary question, Chris Bryant, a minister in the culture and science department, said that it had been supplied by Northumberland County Council.

However, in a freedom of information request seen by Novara Media sent by Foxglove, a legal campaign group monitoring big tech, the council revealed that that source was in fact Blackstone, the vampiric US private equity giant behind the data centre’s construction. The 4,000 figure came from Blackstone’s “evidence of the anticipated job creation numbers” put forward in the planning application.  

Martha Dark, Foxglove’s co-executive director, said that Starmer had either “willingly promoted US Blackstone-owned developer QTS’s PR spiel on jobs, in effect laundering the dubious credibility of the claim through association with his office – or he didn’t know the claim came from them.

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Article continues at https://novaramedia.com/2025/06/04/keir-starmer-used-dodgy-figures-to-claim-4000-new-jobs-in-fact-its-only-400/

Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the "hard times".
Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.

The BlackRock letters: inside Labour’s ‘close partnership’

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Continue ReadingKeir Starmer Used Dodgy Figures to Claim 4,000 New Jobs. In Fact, It’s Only 400