New Labour MP Says Keir Starmer Is Leading The Most “Socialist Friendly Government” Of His Lifetime
5 min read
A new Labour MP believes Keir Starmer is leading the most “socialist friendly government” he has ever seen as the party comes together for its first conference since winning the July General Election.
Patrick Hurley, the new Labour MP for Southport, and a former councillor in Merseyside, describes himself as a working-class politician and a staunch socialist.
Speaking to PoliticsHome before the conference in Liverpool, Hurley said Starmer shares values similar to himself and that the Prime Minister's pledge to be at the “service of working people” chimed with the best traditions of socialism.
“Starmer says he considers himself a socialist, and that's good enough for me. It's certainly what I consider to be the most socialist friendly government of my lifetime,” he said.
“When [Starmer] said that he's putting the Labour Party back in the service of working people, to me, that means making sure that there is a class critique of society, making sure that we put more money into people's pockets, and making sure that we break down the barriers to opportunity.”
Hurley is the first Labour MP for Southport in its history after winning by a majority of 5,789 to unseat Tory Damien Moore on 4 July.
It was one of many striking results in Labour's landslide victory, with the seaside town in Merseyside having been represented by Conservatives for most of its long history, as well as eight MPs from the Liberals or the Liberal Democrats.
Since his victory, Hurley has been paying £80-per-night to stay in a small apartment used for university students at the London School of Economics (LSE) to help him work from Westminster. An MP will usually live in two properties to help them work in both Parliament and their constituency, and will use expenses to pay for their London property.
He has been lodging there for three nights a week, living alongside families and eating breakfast at its canteen, telling PoliticsHome it was not fair to ask the tax payer to fund more expensive accommodation while Parliament was in recess for so long.
MPs had a four-week recess over the summer which was truncated due to the election, as well a three-and-half-week recess for the political party conferences. The majority of MPs spend most of recess in their constituencies, rather than in Parliament.
“What I found is that at LSE, while the students aren’t there throughout the summer, they rent out rooms to overwhelmingly [holiday-goers] but also anybody that wants a room for the night. And the rates, I'll be honest, the rates are cheap as chips,” he said.
The Southport MP plans to move somewhere on a more long-term basis after party conference season finishes at the end of September.
Hurley says that as a socialist he is primarily motivated to use his platform in Westminster to help fix economic inequality. He told PoliticsHome he was more interested in focusing on economic issues than more cultural left-wing concerns.
"People might become members of the Labour Party and become elected MPs to further their interests in climate change or racial injustice or any number of very justified political perspectives, and I will support my colleagues in them being able to do that," he said.
"But me, my entry into Labour party politics and my entry into why I wanted to become a national politician is front and centre around the economic issues."
His belief in economic universalism – where every citizen receives benefits and services – has put him at loggerheads with the Government’s decision to restrict Winter Fuel Payments to pensioners who are receiving pension credit.
Despite feeling uncomfortable with cutting benefits, Hurley said he understood why the Government was pressing ahead with the decision and that he would support Starmer from the backbenches to make “tough decisions”.
“My starting position is I want to extend universalism as much as possible," he said.
"Fundamentally and ideologically, I am not keen on means testing. Nonetheless, even given that, it's a measure of just how bad things are. The measures that I wouldn't in ordinary circumstances of wanted to support, I can see that these things are necessary. They are necessary in terms of getting the foundations right for an economy that will grow."
"It was a tough decision, and I'm sure that with the Budget at the end of October, there are going to be more tough decisions to come.”
After three weeks into the job as an MP, a mass stabbing at a dance studio in Hurley's constituency killed two children and injured ten other people, including eight children.
Hurley said that, with Southport being a small town, almost everyone in the area knew someone who was either there or connected to the tragedy. He praised Starmer and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper for visiting Southport in the wake of the attack, and said he appreciated the Prime Minister returning to the town two more times since it took place.
“It’s a very close-knit community. We’re not used to that attention that we had back at the end of July [and] the start of August,” he said.
Hurley said there were “fundamental material conditions” in Southport which needed to be addressed. But he stressed this did not excuse people rioting in the streets days after the attack.
Hurley said he is working with local authorities to see what can be done to improve children's mental health after the stabbing in August.
“When those children went back to school... for hundreds of them, they had a classmate missing," he told PoliticsHome.
"They would have also had classmates and had friends who'd been traumatized because they'd been in the centre of an attack. So, we're looking to see what we can do around embedding mental health support provision within schools.”
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