Don’t underestimate Starmer’s push for workers’ rights – it could be his defining legacy | Martin Kettle

For the first time in decades, and with public support, dignity and fairness in the workplace are back on the political agenda

Never underestimate the capacity of the political world to focus on questions that are relatively trivial in the larger scheme of things, all while issues of much greater significance stare them in the face. Labour’s furious row over Diane Abbott’s candidacy is a case in point.


Abbott is a politician coming towards the end of her career. She will have no power whatsoever under a Keir Starmer government. But the recent row over Abbott drowned out a far more consequential internal Labour argument – the one over workers’ rights. It is more consequential because, unlike Abbott, millions of workers are in line to get more power under Starmer.

Exactly how much power, and on what terms, is unclear. The details are still being thrashed out. Some of the issues will only crystallise after the election. These are often represented as party management battles, or ancestral left-right tussles. That is true to an extent, but it misses the main point, which is that Labour is attempting something highly ambitious – to create a new business model for the British economy.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist

Continue reading...