Posted by Andrew Sparrow
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2026/feb/13/keir-starmer-cabinet-secretary-chris-wormald-labour-badenoch-conservatives-uk-latest-news-updates
PM says country’s discourse is being poisoned and polluted by rhetoric ‘pitting communities against one another’
The Equality and Human Rights Commission has welcomed a high court ruling defending the interim guidance it issued to organisations about the implications of the supreme court judgement saying that, when the Equality Act refers to sex, it means biological sex.
The guidance – described as an “interim update” – was controversial because it was seen as over-prescriptive, and the Good Law Project launched a legal challenge.
We welcome the court’s conclusion that the interim update was lawful and the EHRC did not act in breach of its statutory duties.
We issued the interim update in response to a high level of demand immediately after the supreme court’s ruling. We were concerned that organisations and individuals could be subject to misinformation and misrepresentation of the judgment and its consequences. That might have led to them failing to comply with the law: adopting or maintaining discriminatory policies or practices, to the detriment of those the law is supposed to protect.
It is wrong because it reduces trans people to a third sex. It is wrong because it gives little or no weight to the harm done to trans people by excluding them. And it is wrong because it is not interested enough in the rights of people who are trans to keep their status private.
The tragic irony for [Morgan] McSweeney [Starmer’s chief of staff until Sunday] was that Starmer’s 18 months as prime minister have only vindicated Blair’s central analysis of their project. McSweeney and Starmer might have identified what they disliked most about the excesses of New Labour, but they never developed an alternative political economy of their own that might replace it. In place of Blairism there was no theory of political reform or coherent critique of British state failure, no analysis of Britain’s future place in the world or any kind of distinct moral mission. All there was was a promise to “clean things up” as Starmer put it to me. The mission became, in essence, conservative: to protect the settlement erected by Blair and eroded over the 20 years since his departure. Britain could thrive if it could only begin to live within its means, attract more foreign investment, reassure the bond markets and return a sense of “service” to government. After years of chaos, mere stability would be change. And this would be enough.
Where there was distinct radicalism – from McSweeney’s Blue Labour instincts – there was no mandate. McSweeney and Starmer had not fought an ideological battle to bring Blue Labour to government, as Wilson had done for socialist modernisation in the 1960s and Blair for liberal progressivism 30 years later. This was largely because Starmer never really believed in it in the first place and McSweeney, though a reflective thinker, was always more of an operator than political theorist. And so, the pair offered a programme without a programme, a government without ideas or the mandate to enact them.
Another of those who worked for [Stamer] adds: ‘He’s completely incurious. He’s not interested in policy or politics. He thinks his job is to sit in a room and be serious, be presented with something and say “Yes” or “No” – invariably “Yes” – rather than be persuader–in-chief.’ Even before he fell out with Starmer, Mandelson told friends and colleagues that the Prime Minister had never once asked him ‘What really makes Trump tick?’ or ‘How will he react to this?’.
Others dispute the claim of incuriosity. ‘There are subjects when he drills down and he’s really, really good,’ says another aide. ‘The idea he can’t think politically is also wrong. He will often think ahead.’ But even these loyalists admit Starmer lacks a ‘philosophical worldview’.
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