Marc Stears

Jul 5, 2024 | theguardian.com | Marc Stears

At 5 o’clock on Friday morning, just as the faint London dawn broke, Sir Keir Starmer walked into the huge Turbine Hall at the city’s Tate Modern museum to meet his supporters. He wore a smile that mixed delight and uncertainty and his eyes darted across the room. “We did it!”, he shouted, almost in disbelief. Seen from overseas, that disbelief might cause surprise. Like Anthony Albanese’s Labor party in 2022, Starmer’s Labour party went into this election as a firm favourite.

Jun 11, 2024 | labourlist.org | Marc Stears

It is one of the timeless myths of British politics that oppositions don’t win elections but governments lose them. And this time it seems that Rishi Sunak has been doing as much as possible to prove the cliché right. From catching his own party unaware that an election was on its way to launching it in the rain and leaving the beaches of Normandy early, the Prime Minister’s campaign has been continually hit by error and confusion. But just because a myth seems true, it doesn’t make it so.

May 30, 2024 | lse.ac.uk | Marc Stears |Tom Baldwin

LSE Player is home to the latest films and podcasts from the London School of Economics and Political Science. Here you can watch videos on cutting edge research, find the award-winning LSE IQ podcast, and listen to more than 5,000 public event recordings featuring some of the world’s leading thinkers.

May 16, 2024 | theguardian.com | John Harris |Marc Stears |Nicole Jackson

The Labour leader has managed to stem a potential showdown with trade union leaders this week over wording on a workers’ rights deal. If this is a dress rehearsal for Labour in government, how has Keir Starmer and his party fared?

Apr 30, 2024 | theneweuropean.co.uk | Marc Stears |Tom Baldwin

A lot of what happened on St George’s Day this year was fairly predictable. Nadine Dorries wrote in the Daily Mail that anyone who is loyal and patriotic gets “mocked, belittled or openly scorned”. The Sun interviewed some cab drivers about the “bonkers ban” on flying the flag, while later on there were a handful of arrests outside a pub, following a Tommy Robinson rally attended by Laurence Fox in Whitehall.