 Keir Starmer might have hoped today would see a shift away from internal battles and towards some of the policies he is promising to implement if Labour were to enter government. They include £26 billion per year for climate investment. However, any new pledges have now been overshadowed by a high-level resignation. This afternoon, Andy McDonald resigned as Shadow Secretary of State for Employment Rights. He's done so because of Keir Starmer's refusal to back a £15 minimum wage. In his resignation letter, he wrote, Yesterday, your office instructed me to go into a meeting to argue against a national minimum wage of £15 an hour and against statutory sick pay at the living wage. This is something I could not do. Labour's current commitment is only to a £10 minimum wage. The trade unions have been pushing for £15. In his resignation letter, McDonald explained why he felt now was a particularly poor time to be opposing higher minimum wages. On that, he said, We live in a time when the people of this country have a renewed awareness of how important the work done by millions of low-paid workers truly is to have the Labour Party, the party of working people fail to realise that is a bitter blow. McDonald also made clear his disquiet with Starmer wasn't just down to his stance on the minimum wage. He said, I joined your front bench team on the basis of the pledges that you made in the leadership campaign to bring about unity within the party and maintain our commitment to socialist policies. After 18 months of your leadership, our movement is more divided than ever and the pledges that you made to the membership are not being honoured. This is just the latest of many. After releasing that letter, Andy McDonald spoke to Sky and was asked if he believed Starmer had been acting in bad faith. Do you think Keir Starmer is a liar? No, I don't believe Keir Starmer is a liar. I know Boris Johnson is a liar because that's proven beyond any shadow of a doubt. You're making accusations of bad faith from the leadership. Well, I would recommend that when we engage with our trade union partners that we do so in a way that we can sustain. And leader after leader, general secretary after general secretary has said, I've not been consulted about these matters. The outcome of the consultation is irrelevant, but I do not condone bouncing people into decisions about such important matters without going through that proper process. And that is what the movement is about and we hold those principles dear. On that topic, it's worth remembering the following quote that Andy McDonald gave to Owen Jones just last week. In the shadow cabinet, only Andy McDonald's, this is the words of Owen Jones, the shadow secretary of state for employment rights spoke against the change of rules. He argued that conference was about presenting a vision to the country and unifying the party behind it. And this will do the exact opposite. If you want impact from making your resignation, then doing it, you know, in the middle of Labour Party conference on an issue which people, you know, which is so, so sort of central to people's politics as a proper minimum wage, I mean, Andy McDonald's, this is the right time to do it, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And I think that Andy McDonald balanced it very well. So on the one hand, timing his resignation for maximum visibility, although it is said that he was instructed by the leadership to argue against a 15 pound minimum wage. So it wasn't just that Kistama wouldn't make the commitment. He was being asked to present the case against a fairer deal for workers. And that was anathema to Andy McDonald. But he also wasn't going as far as saying Kistama is a liar. I think that Andy McDonald still very much sees himself as a team player. He wants a Labour government. That's why he joined Kistama's shadow cabinet. And now he's been asked to co-sign an abandonment. Not just socialist principles, but basic social democratic principles ranging from these economic issues to do with the level at which statutory sick pay is set and also the national minimum wage, but also this internal matter of how the party is organised, to what extent are members empowered to use their voice to, you know, be able to choose a leader and whether or not it's encouraged to invite the electorate at large to come and join the party. So I think that really it's probably been death by a thousand cuts for Andy McDonald and it was simply too much to ask of him that he abandoned his commitment to low wage workers in this country and argue against their interests and say that a 15 pound minimum wage or indeed statutory sick pay being set at living wage level is unreasonable. Too much can't be done. So Labour policy on this issue is completely indistinct from the Tories, which I think just from a basic strategy level, what you want is clear red water between the two parties so you can give the public a meaningful choice to make rather than we're going to be Tory light and never actually do the things that you like about them all that well. I don't think that that's a successful way for Labour to pitch itself to the country, but also the second thing being that back in November 2019. So we're not talking a particularly long time ago. This is probably when Keir Starmer is thinking very seriously about his leadership pitch to the membership. He's out on the picket line holding a banner saying 15 pound minimum wage. And more than that, he also made a video where he said, I'm happy to support these McDonald's workers, then are asking for the earth. It's just a 15 pound wage. So if it's not asking for the earth back then in 2019, and it's perfectly reasonable, what's changed now? Because I don't actually think that this excuse of all the economic uncertainty of the pandemic is is a good excuse. What we've seen is that low wages and poor conditions actually made people more vulnerable to coronavirus. It forced them into work because they were worried about keeping a roof over their heads. And what we've also seen is that all of those second order issues, which emanate from the fact that pay has not kept up the cost of living, housing insecurity, food poverty, all of these things also worse than during the pandemic. And again, made people much more vulnerable. It's not something which makes sense if, again, you hold to basic, not even socialist, but social democratic principles of how you should organize society. So Andy McDonald's been very gracious. He said that I don't think his time is a liar. I don't think his time is a liar either. I think he's a snake and an opportunist. And he will say anything for short term gain and abandon it at the first available opportunity. I'd have thought a 15 pound minimum wage would be very much within Labour's sort of mainstream at this point in time. And I can't really see why the Labour Party couldn't have backed the trade unions on that one. This isn't really, as you say, this isn't a far left proposal. This is a social democratic proposal. And the point you make about now being the time, you know, you don't see moments of crisis and say, oh, we couldn't possibly make radical change now because there's a moment of crisis. We'll do the radical changes when we've recovered from the crisis and everything suddenly stable. That is the opposite of how politics works. Right. The right are very good at this. The left used to be good at it, by the way, the 1945 government. You didn't get at least standing up and say, oh, now isn't the time to do a national health service because we're currently rebuilding the economy as it was. No, that's the moment where you say now is the moment that we rebuilding rebuilding the economy. Let's rebuild it in a way that we want it to look like that the Labour movement wants it to look like and that the public want it to look like and be it on public ownership, be it on the minimum wage on so many issues. Labour keeps saying, oh, now's not the time to have these big conversations about improving people's lives. We'll do that at some unspecified time in the future. And it just seems completely self-defeating. Do you think this will do any damage to Keir Starmore? Will he be worried about this resignation? I don't think he necessarily will be worried about this resignation, mostly because he's got Peter Mandelson and his acolytes around him saying, no, this is great. You've got Dame Louise Elman back and you've got Andy McDonald out. This solidifies our control of the party, which is the same thing as your control of the party. So I don't think that he's actually got the kind of political awareness to see what this is doing to Labour at large amongst the electorate. The fact is, is that this this supposed tactic of making a pitch to the same retired homeowners who've been voting conservative in their droves, I don't think it's going to work. There's no evidence that's simply punching the left, alienating the parties left and also saying no to fairly sensible policies like setting statutory sick pay in line with the living wage. There's no sign that that is bringing back any of that cohort, because quite frankly, they've got divergent material interests from the majority of the working age population. These are people who aren't in the workforce anymore. These are people who, you know, own their own home and often have paid off their mortgage outright. That's very different from being somebody who is in a very predatory employment market where there may be on a zero hours contract, where maybe they're on the minimum wage and can only find part time work and they're trying to piece it together. It's very different from being somebody who is dealing with housing costs in the rental market as opposed to somebody who's paying off a mortgage. Now, Keir Starmer is trying to make a pitch towards voters who aren't coming back. They're not coming back. That's not happening. And there is a whole, well, not even one generation anymore, anyone who's really under 40 years old who are having their interests completely thrown under the bus by this leadership. And while I don't think they're necessarily going to go and vote for other parties, there will be, I think, a bit of a bounce for the Greens, but maybe not a huge one for the Liberal Democrats or anybody else. Well, there will be as a lower voter turnout. So in those key swing constituencies where you do you have more of an ageing population, more former Labour voters who are voting Tory, what you need is a pretty good turnout amongst those younger voters in order to get Labour over the line, they're going to be staying at home. And you know what? I can't blame them.