Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has made comments echoing Peter Mandelson and seemingly u-turned on his tuition fees pledge, leaving people questioning the party’s direction, as they aim to win the next election.
Mandelson & Starmer
It comes as Sir Keir Starmer says he is ‘relaxed’ about people being rich echoing Peter Mandelson’s famous quote from the Blair era.
However, even Lord Mandelson admitted he is no longer “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes”, and that was back in 2012, reported The Guardian.
Mandelson made the comments almost a decade and a half after making the remarks, which people saw as Labour embracing the free market, and turning away from its socialist ideals.
Now the current Labour leader said ‘knows what aspiration is’ and that Rishi Sunak does not know the anxiety of being poor.
He said he is “relaxed” about people being rich and wanting to be rich.
Tuition fees
It also seems Starmer has U-turned on his promise to scrap University tuition fees.
Even North of Tyne mayor Jamie Driscoll has criticised Sir Keir’s U-turn on a commitment made during his leadership campaign to abolish university tuition fees
He told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that Sir Keir “should have stuck” with his promise to get rid of the £9,250-a-year fees and that he did not “buy into the Tory narrative that there is no money”, reports The Evening Chronicle.
Here is a Starmer before and after!
It ended well for Nick Clegg. In the long-term it did for him, living the silicon dream for Facebook or Meta, whatever they go by these days.
Related: PMQs: Sunak calls Starmer softy & flakey but two Rishi answers melted away