The former Home Secretary, Lord David Blunkett, has been full of praise for the "great start" made by the new Labour government after Sir Keir Starmer's landslide victory in July.
He praised the Prime Minister's start on international relations with the United States and Europe and how the government responded to rioting in August - but did highlight his concerns about the party's "miserablist" tone.
Lord Blunkett sat down with The Star's Harry Harrison for The Sheffield Scoop podcast, and you can find the full interview wherever you get your podcasts from September 20.
He praised the Prime Minister's start on international relations with the United States and Europe and how the government responded to rioting in August - but did highlight his concerns about the party's "miserablist" tone.
Lord Blunkett sat down with The Star's Harry Harrison for The Sheffield Scoop podcast, and you can find the full interview wherever you get your podcasts from September 20.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00I'll jump straight in and ask you, because we've had a couple of months of it now, of the new Labour government,
00:06what are your thoughts on how Keir Starmer and his team are doing?
00:09Well, I think they've made a great start. I think they picked up the international agenda.
00:14Keir Starmer has been to Washington twice in the weeks since 4th July.
00:22We have the Blenheim Palace European Political Council
00:27and we had, of course, to deal with the riots which, of course, affected Rotherham in our area.
00:34I think all of those were handled extremely well.
00:38And, of course, he settled some of the major outstanding industrial relations problems,
00:43not least in being prepared to meet the pay review body recommendations
00:50for absolutely key workers who we need to recruit in health and in education.
00:56I'm slightly bemused about the miserable-est bit of the agenda.
01:02I know we've got a major gap between income and expenditure.
01:06I know that measures are going to have to be taken to deal with it and it's not going to be easy.
01:11But I think after the austerity measures of 14 years ago and then the Brexit division
01:20and then the Covid epidemic, pandemic, I think actually we need to lift our horizons a bit.
01:27So, realism, yeah, but we need motivation, we need to lift morale, we need to energise the country.
01:34I think my take is that we're tired. I mean, I don't mean personally, although sometimes I am,
01:40but I think as a country we need lifting and I hope that in the months
01:45and in the four and a half years ahead of us we can do just that.