Dr Steve McCabe, politics expert, with analysis of some recent announcements by Sir Kier Starmer.
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00:00 Well, you can also add to the fact that they've watered down their focus on the green economy
00:07 and agenda and all that goes with it. It's mainly down to the cost of the latter. In
00:11 terms of workers' rights, and of course, Stalmer's had to row back on that also, that's probably
00:16 because, of course, that's big businesses which, of course, have got a vested interest
00:20 in this. They're trying to keep what they regard as their ability to, you know, the
00:24 machines going and, of course, to work as effectively and, more importantly, as cheaply
00:28 as possible. It's the unions that will be funding much of the Labour election campaign
00:33 and there have been suggestions that that funding could come under review. So, it's
00:38 a path that Sir Keir Starmer needs to tread carefully, really. Insofar as, of course,
00:42 you have to be careful of who your paymasters are, but undoubtedly, the Conservative Party's
00:47 traditional party business, they rely, or traditionally have relied, on big business,
00:52 albeit that many businesses have said that, of course, they didn't, or the Conservative
00:55 Party did not listen to them when they were sort of making plain their concerns about
00:59 the way that the Brexit referendum was being conducted and, indeed, the consequences thereafter
01:04 of the deal we did with the EU. Labour are in this curious position that they want to
01:09 sort of be seen to be a radical alternative, but not so radical and, indeed, I'm thinking
01:15 particularly of the last election, which, of course, was led by the Labour Party, or
01:18 the Labour Party was led, if I may say, by Jeremy Corbyn, who would have been a lot more
01:22 sort of radical in terms of his approaches than, certainly, Keir Starmer is. So, he's,
01:27 if you like, trying to distance himself and keep on board both the workers and businesses.
01:32 So, indeed, Tony Blair talked about the third way, somewhere in between. So, it's very much
01:38 sort of soft-centrist, as it were, and, indeed, some people might sort of argue it's very
01:42 much the sort of the approach that was adopted by a certain sort of Edward Heath, who was
01:46 sort of in government for the Conservative Party in the very early '70s, that that degree
01:51 of sort of moderation and conciliation and collaboration, and, indeed, words that we
01:56 haven't sort of heard too much of in sort of recent years in British politics.