Socialists marginalised under current PM are anxious about whether his replacement will again disappoint them
On 10 September 2024, Jon Trickett, a veteran leftwing MP, was preparing to vote against one of his own government’s most incendiary plans: to remove the winter fuel allowance from some retired people, a benefit long seen by many UK households as essential. Senior figures told Trickett he would be the only Labour member of parliament to do so. He said this week: “I said: ‘I don’t give a fuck. I’m going to do what I believe is the right thing.’ And I was right.”
That has since seen as a policy misstep from which Keir Starmer’s government never recovered. Trickett could, perhaps, be forgiven for indulging in a little schadenfreude after Starmer’s resignation this week, just two years after he won a landslide general election victory.