Labor conference: Starmer won’t make inexpensive spending pledges like Corbyn, says Lammy – LIVE | Policy

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good morning. Last year, when Sir Keir Starmer gave his first speech as leader of the Labor Congress, the speech was online, meaning he had all the excitement, immediacy and clout of a Zoom call. As if that weren’t enough, just as the second wave of Covid took off, it was overshadowed by Boris Johnson’s televised address to the nation later in the day announcing some new restrictions. The speech was well received on its own terms, but, as a defining moment of leadership, it was always doomed.

This is why today’s speech is especially important. If Starmer can’t use it to spur Labor’s performance in the polls (currently indicating that the party is on course to lose the next election), he will be without excuses.

Labor shared some excerpts from the speech overnight, saying Starmer would promise to make mental health treatment available to everyone who needs it within a month, and set up mental health centers geared toward children and young adults. Here is my colleague Heather Stewart’s overnight story.

And this morning, the party released another excerpt from the speech: Starmer will pledge to reform Ofsted so that it will focus in the future on struggling schools, as part of a school improvement plan that the party says aims to “increase the number of outstanding schools in all regions of the country; raise standards and enable every child to achieve his full potential.”

This is an excerpt from the briefing issued by the Labor Party.

The National Excellence Program will include: recruiting thousands of new teachers to address vacancies and skill gaps across the profession; Ofsted reform to focus on supporting struggling schools; Providing teachers and school administrators with continuing professional development and leadership training.

Even before the pandemic, 200,000 primary school-aged children in England had been raised in areas where not a single primary school was rated as good or outstanding.

Labor says there are 200,000 primary-school-aged children living in areas that do not have good or excellent schools, and says this is a particular problem in the Northeast, where 11 out of 12 local authorities have an above-average proportion of pupils who attend school is poor. the performance. The report also stated that “a secondary school student living in the north of England is five times more likely to attend a school with poor performance compared to his peers living in London.”

(Interestingly, in the briefing to journalists, Labor cites as the source for some of this data, and this report was written in part by Onward, a conservative think tank.)

Starmer will say in his speech:

I want every parent in the country to be able to send their child to a great public school.

Moreover, 40% of young people leave compulsory education without basic qualifications. What does that say about their future? We will not tolerate that.

This is why Labor is launching the most ambitious school improvement plan ever.

There are only two items on the agenda today.

9.45 am: Conference opens with a session titled “General Election Report”. Contributors include Hayden Munro, the strategist credited with planning the landslide victory of the New Zealand Labor Party in 2020; Muthoni Wambu Kraal, Political Director and Organizer of the US Democratic National Committee for the 2020 Presidential Election; Vaughan Geting, Minister of Economy in the Welsh Government; Dan Norris, Labor Mayor of West England; And Shabban Mahmoud, the coordinator of the National Campaign for the Workers’ Party.

12 noon: Sir Keir Starmer gives his speech.

I will focus exclusively on work today. For the latest news on the fuel shortage crisis, follow my colleague Julia Koliwi’s Business Direct blog.

I’m trying to monitor the BTL comments but it’s impossible to read them all. If you have a direct question, include “Andrew” somewhere and I’ll likely find it. I try to answer the questions, and if they are of general interest, I will post the question and answer it above the line (ATL), although I can’t promise that for everyone.

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Starmer looks at his speech at the conference from the hotel balcony. Photo: WPA/Getty Images.

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