I watched Keir Starmer’s Labour conference speech last week in a hotel bar full of party activists and local councillors. When he said the words “…and yes, Great British Energy will be publicly owned”, many punched the air. Some punched the bar.
That was the moment Starmer sealed the deal – not just with the centre-left technocrats who form his natural base within the party, but with broad swathes of activists, from the left to the old Labour right, who’d been sceptical of his capacity for vision, passion and persuasion.
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