This is In Conversation with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.
My Mr Brown is rational, annoyingly sensible, temperate, and unlike me, not given to fits of high emotion. So imagine alarm when he brought me my morning coffee with his hand shaking and voice crackling with fury. He had just heard Labour’s shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting on Radio 4’s Today programme, apparently being “slippery and arrogant, totally devious”. He went on: “If Labour win, it’s because the Tories are hated not because voters love Labour.” I agree with him. And it hurts to have to admit that.
We will not witness joy erupting across the land, the way it did in 1997 when Tony Blair saw off the Tories in a landslide victory after 18 years of Tory rule. I danced on a street in London’s Covent Garden; strangers kissed and hugged; optimism filled the air. Until his catastrophic alliance with George W Bush and the Iraq War. But despite his dodgy rich backers and friends, Blair delivered positive change for the underprivileged, indeed most Britons. When he spoke stirringly about education, education, education, he meant it. I despise what he became but give him due credit for making a real difference.
Labour voters who feel as torn and unhappy are told by today’s Starmerites and yesterday’s Blairites to trust the party’s leader and not to betray the future, ripening nicely, waiting to be seized. At an event this week, a Labour peer was visibly furious when I told him exactly what I have written here. “Why can’t you wait till we win? It will all turn out right.” Right, yeah, that’s the problem. And trust too. When Starmer steers the party this way and that, turns Labour into a monocultural behemoth and is savagely intolerant of any dissent, it fills many of us with burning mistrust.
Others, though, are cool with all of that. The cross Lord above blindly backs “our future prime minister”; Rafael Behr in The Guardian issues a rallying cry of first, let’s get the Tories out and then fix our broken system. Tom Baldwin, a former Labour adviser, in his new biography praises Starmer lavishly for focusing entirely on winning and approvingly quotes Chris Ward, a political insider close to Starmer: “…he didn’t spend his life in the Labour Party, and it isn’t his whole life, even now. It’s why he could win the leadership contest from the soft left and now lead it from the centre right.” All political parties have such loyal tribalists. I’m so glad I am not one.
After the shameful chaos over the Scottish National Party vote demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Starmer and his well-trained crew tepidly called for “an immediate, humanitarian ceasefire”. That vote was passed. This call was only made, I think, because of the by-election in Rochdale. Day after day, the shadow team saw the horrific death toll of Palestinian civilians, and made strong statements about Israel’s right to defend itself. This motion was put forward because they realised voters would punish them. Political cynicism is always bad. But this Labour manoeuvre is truly, exceptionally obnoxious.
So does writing this honest view harm Labour and help the Conservatives? No. First I am small fry, not important at all to either. If all-consumed party operators bother to read this, they will laugh out loud and say, “Who cares what she thinks? Who does she think she is?”
So why bother? Because many voters who have always voted for Labour are feeling as conflicted as I am. After so many years under a government which took care of the best off, punished the most disempowered and wrecked the country, we want to be lead to a better place. That better place will need to be imagined and created. It will take resources, a commitment to equality for all, a shared belief that Britain belongs to us all.
Maybe he wants this too, but Starmer, at present, makes me more anxious than excited about his values and plans. I won’t dance in the street when he wins. That may come later.
British home secretaries between 1782 to 2007 were all white men. Jacqui Smith was the first woman to hold the post, followed by Theresa May and Amber Rudd – three white women. Look what happened next: Priti Patel, then Suella Braverman, now James Cleverly, broke through the colour line. Then became the most ferocious protectors of little Britain and the enemies of so-called “third world” migrants.
Cleverly has just sacked David Neal, the independent immigration and borders watchdog. Neal was removed from his post after details of reports criticising the Home Office were published. Cleverly wants to show he’s tough on migration. But hark. Here, in his own words, his story: “My mother initially qualified as a teacher in Sierra Leone but then decided to pursue a career in nursing. She came to England in 1960 and trained as a nurse at Redhill Teaching Hospital then went on to qualify as a midwife in 1965.” Back then Enoch Powell opposed “migrant floods” just as viciously as Patel, Braverman and Cleverly do so in our times. Is there a term for such psychological disconnection?
On Tuesday evening I went to a fab party to celebrate the work of Hacked Off, the campaigning organisation launched after the phone hacking scandal. Many of us in the business are often racked with guilt about the way intrusive journalism wrecks lives and exerts illegitimate power over individuals and groups, many of whom do not have the influence or money to fight back.
Often when you tell people you are a journalist, they shrink away. Young, upcoming journalists feel this most intensely. They didn’t grow up in a media culture where editors routinely behaved badly. I know well what that was like.
We need the press to be free and also fair and answerable. Those who say we have to take the good with the bad are out of time. We should be backing these reformers.
The Entangled Pasts exhibition at the (hitherto, cautious and traditional) Royal Academy in London’s Piccadilly is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Step into the courtyard and you behold a sculpture of such dazzling beauty that you almost forget to breathe.
It’s life size, with black historical figures – some jet black, some gold – around a laden dining table. Inside, room after room sweeps you away, with old and new, deeply meaningful art. Go, please go see it.
This is In Conversation with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, a subscriber-only newsletter from i. If you’d like to get this direct to your inbox, every single week, you can sign up here.
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