But a pair of embarrassing suspensions of Labour parliamentary candidates for their comments about Israel, a week after a messy reversal on climate policy, have thrown Mr. Starmer on the defensive, raising questions about his management skills and taking the spotlight off the long-suffering Conservatives.
“Keir has had a really good, long run but he’s not Man City,” said John McTernan, a political strategist, referring to the Manchester soccer club that is a perennial champion of England’s Premier League.
It stuck by one of them, Azhar Ali, for almost two days after a London tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, reported that he had claimed Israel “allowed” the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, in which 1,200 civilians and soldiers were killed.
But the episode revived allegations of lingering anti-Jewish sentiment in the party’s ranks, despite Mr. Starmer’s concerted — and by most accounts, successful — campaign to root out systemic antisemitism.
The Israel-Gaza war has put Labour in a tricky position because — alongside its support for Israel, which it shares with the Conservative government — it wants to signal to voters in Muslim communities that it understands their anguish and outrage at the rising death toll among Palestinians.
Some pointed to the similarly dilatory debate over the future of Labour’s green policy, which analysts said became a tug of war between Mr. Starmer and the party’s fiscally conservative shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves.
The original article contains 1,116 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But a pair of embarrassing suspensions of Labour parliamentary candidates for their comments about Israel, a week after a messy reversal on climate policy, have thrown Mr. Starmer on the defensive, raising questions about his management skills and taking the spotlight off the long-suffering Conservatives.
“Keir has had a really good, long run but he’s not Man City,” said John McTernan, a political strategist, referring to the Manchester soccer club that is a perennial champion of England’s Premier League.
It stuck by one of them, Azhar Ali, for almost two days after a London tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, reported that he had claimed Israel “allowed” the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, in which 1,200 civilians and soldiers were killed.
But the episode revived allegations of lingering anti-Jewish sentiment in the party’s ranks, despite Mr. Starmer’s concerted — and by most accounts, successful — campaign to root out systemic antisemitism.
The Israel-Gaza war has put Labour in a tricky position because — alongside its support for Israel, which it shares with the Conservative government — it wants to signal to voters in Muslim communities that it understands their anguish and outrage at the rising death toll among Palestinians.
Some pointed to the similarly dilatory debate over the future of Labour’s green policy, which analysts said became a tug of war between Mr. Starmer and the party’s fiscally conservative shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves.
The original article contains 1,116 words, the summary contains 235 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!