Speaker 3
Christmas 2021, Labour had come from 15 points behind to neck and neck. And it would only get better for Labour. What are you going to do about the term on on the markets this morning, sir? The Tories seemed a veer from crisis to crisis, and mostly all Labour needed to do was not say very much.
Speaker 1
On quite a few things, Kiera Starmer has changed position over the course of this episode. So why has he moved so far from his 2020 leadership pledges? I asked Jenny
Speaker 2
Chapman. We've had a massive economic hit, we've had COVID, we've left the European Union, a lot has happened. The additional thing to point out is that in that time, Kiera has spent a lot of time talking to people and listening really hard to what people who've got nothing to do with politics or the Labour Party think about the world and what their worries and concerns are and their ambitions for the future. And that's why you've seen that shift. It's about reality and about having to go for the whole country and not just the Labour movement. And that has been a really important shift for him. And because he's made that shift, that is why we have a chance, just a chance of winning the next election.
Speaker 1
And did he know he was going to make that shift?
Speaker 2
No, I don't think he did. I think that's happened through necessity and it's happened through experience and listening. It was not calculated. I don't believe in all the pledges that were made. They were not my pledges. I was like, I thought, I had a view. But I wasn't standing to be leaving the Labour Party. These were things that Kiera had thought and felt. But the essay question is very different when you're asking to be leader of a movement to asking to be prime minister of an entire country, which has people with much, much more diverse needs than our half a million Labour Party members.
Speaker 1
So, Aggie, we just heard Jenny Chapman's explanation for why Kiera Starmer has moved so far from his initial pitch to the Labour Party. But I'm not sure if all listeners will be convinced by that second answer that he never knew he was going to make that shift. There's maybe still an open question about how much he knew even then that he would move very far from that position if he actually became leader.
