Soubry praises Starmer’s values and competence
Anna Soubry, the former Conservative business minister, has announced she will be voting for Labour at the next general election. The former MP, now a criminal barrister, said on social media that she will be voting for Keir Starmer. On Wednesday, she wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “I will be voting #Labour. With @Keir_Starmer as leader they have the values and competence to deliver the change our country desperately needs.”
Soubry also posted a cutting of a newspaper article on Starmer’s speech on Tuesday at the Labour party conference in Liverpool. She highlighted in red marker a section where the Labour leader suggests his party now embodies traditional Tory values. Starmer said: “We are the party of work, of family, of security. We are the party of the NHS, of social care, of schools. We are the party of Britain’s future.”
Soubry quit the Tories over Brexit
Soubry helped found the Independent Group for Change, later Change UK, in 2019 after quitting the Conservative Party over then-prime minister Theresa May’s handling of Brexit. She was one of the most vocal opponents of leaving the European Union and campaigned for a second referendum. She accused the Tories of being taken over by the hard right and said she could no longer remain in a party that was “anti-business, anti-workers’ rights and anti-Europe”.
Change UK, a group of disaffected Labour and Tory MPs, disbanded after they all lost their seats in the 2019 election. Soubry was the leader of the party but failed to retain her Broxtowe constituency in Nottinghamshire, which she had represented since 2010. She lost to Darren Henry, a Conservative candidate who backed Brexit.
Soubry joins Carney in endorsing Labour
Soubry’s announcement comes after Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, endorsed the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, on Monday in a video message played to the annual conference. Carney, who ran the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, said: “Rachel Reeves is a serious economist. She began her career at the Bank of England, so she understands the big picture. But, crucially she understands the economics of work, of place and family. And, look, it is beyond time we put her energy and ideas into action.”
Carney’s support came after Reeves made a series of pledges in her conference speech including reducing government waste to save an estimated £4bn, an inquiry into the failure to build HS2 and a planned crackdown on the use of private planes by ministers.
Soubry and Carney are among the prominent figures who have expressed their confidence in Labour’s ability to govern under Starmer’s leadership. Starmer has vowed to rebuild trust with voters and present a credible alternative to Boris Johnson’s Conservative government.
