After what was widely acknowledged to be one of the worst weeks of Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership — in which Labour once again became embroiled in antisemitism and the leader himself was accused of indecision over Rochdale candidate Azhar Ali — the mood has suddenly switched.
Labour has won two more by-elections off the Conservatives, picking up Kingswood in South Gloucestershire and Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, in both cases overturning sizeable majorities. It is further evidence not only that the party is on course to form a government in the autumn, but that crises of their own making do not seem to be hampering their progress.
The release of major economic data on the morning of the by-election, revealing that the UK economy had slipped into recession, could scarcely have come at a worse time for the Tories. Yet the scale of the defeat probably made that moot. The question for Sir Keir is becoming less whether he will enter Downing Street, but whether he and his party are ready. Viewed in that light, this week has been one of mixed results.
Big day in FGM battle
It was a legal first. Last October, Amina Noor, 39, from Harrow, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of handing over a three-year-old British girl for female genital mutilation (FGM) during a trip to Kenya. The first conviction of its kind, it carries a maximum sentence of 14 years. Today, Noor is to be sentenced.
The Evening Standard has long been at the forefront of the campaign to confront FGM, whether that be people living in the UK who send their young daughters overseas to be mutilated, or in nations where the practice remains commonplace. Our columnist, Nimco Ali, has for more than a decade campaigned to protect girls against FGM, writing about the issue frequently in these pages.
The law must protect women and girls — and so today is a momentous day as we continue the fight to end this torture entirely.
Beautiful and beastly
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and for a city as vast as London goes, that is perhaps just as well.
Today’s Standard airs both sides of the debate. In one corner is our columnist Melanie McDonagh, who despairs at the redevelopment of the former ITV Studios on the South Bank. On the other is Culture Editor Nancy Durrant, who hits back at Peter Coy in the New York Times for calling the capital’s skyline “cacophonous”, saying the chaos is part of the magic. Looks matter, of course.
But so does history, character, and ultimately how a city uses what it’s got.
