From 2 hours ago, Keir Starmer has finished his appearance at the Civil Society event. He praised the voluntary sector and said they would be a vital part of Labour’s plan for a “decade of national renewal.” He attacked the Conservative party, saying: “The Tory party has undertaken a kind of weird McCarthyism, trying to find woke agendas in the very civic institutions they once regarded with respect.” He said the Tories seem set on “sabotaging civil society to save their own skin”, adding: “It’s desperate, it’s divisive, it’s damaging.” Starmer has said in this Q&A that the current government after 14 years is going to leave the country worse off than they found it, and that is unforgiveable for a political party, any political party, he says. He stresses again he is talking about a “decade of national renewal” because it isn’t just about fixing things but fixing them and then improving them, and it has to be sustained over more than five years. Starmer says that he is convinced that among the main problems of the last 14 years has been “sticking plaster” politics which “mask the problem for a short period of time” but then when they come off they usually reveal an even bigger problem. During his speech he said that real and lasting change takes longer than the election cycle, and talked about a decade of work that needed to be done. Clare Moriarty, managing director of Citizens Advice, is now doing a Q&A with Keir Starmer at the Civil Society event. You can watch that here. My colleague Mark Sweney has more dismal news on the economy this morning: More than 47,000 UK companies are on the brink of collapse after a 25% jump in businesses facing “critical” financial distress in the final three months of 2023, according to a new report. It marks the second consecutive quarter-on-quarter period when critical financial distress has risen by a 25%, the latest “Red Flag” report by insolvency specialists Begbies Traynor found. The construction and property sectors accounted for 30% of all businesses facing critical financial distress. Eighteen of the 22 sectors covered by the report recorded double-digit percentage growth in the number of firms whose finances have… Source from www.theguardian.com
