Moreover, as Brexit has made the headlines, Starmer has sought to deftly sidestep Tory attempts to portray him as an out-of-touch remainer. Instead of “re-opening old arguments” over remain or leave, the Labour leader has urged Boris to “get on” with delivering a “good deal”; as such he whipped Labour into voting for the Government’s deal on 30 December.
Now Brexit is done, some believe voters will expect a tougher line from Labour on immigration. But having voted for Boris’s deal, it would look odd if Starmer now panders to the advocates of open borders who dominate the Labour membership. The Labour leader, though, has gambled that immigration is going to become less of an issue going forward. Public attitudes towards immigration have become more positive since the Brexit vote of 2016. People are also less concerned about it in general. This may change if exit from the European Union does not significantly reduce the numbers coming to the UK, but with the pandemic largely halting mass migration for the moment any way this could well prove to be clever politics by Starmer.
Starmer’s bind is that, as Sir John Curtice has phrased it, Labour “is now very heavily dependent on a pro-Remain electorate that so far at least shows relatively little sign of being resigned to Brexit”. He is gambling that this will change over the course of the current parliament, with Brexit slipping down voters’ list of concerns. However the task ahead is a daunting one. To win power in 2024 Labour must make significant gains in Scotland, retake the Red Wall seats it lost at recent elections, but also hold onto some of the metropolitan seats captured in 2017.
How, then, does he intend to do this? Critics of Starmer often target his caginess and apparent lack of a big idea. This is a familiar criticism from those on the Left who are wedded to the notion that elections are won on policy. Previous Labour leaders have bought into this way of doing politics, with little success. Ed Miliband zig-zagged between various schools of thought in the early years of his leadership, from Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour to themes of a ‘squeezed middle’ and ‘producers’ versus ‘predators’. As George Eaton wrote for the New Statesman back in 2014, Miliband “has announced policies at a rate that Westminster historians agree exceeds that of any recent leader of the opposition”. Much of it was forgotten by the 2015 election.
Similarly, Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 manifesto offered voters a blitz of policy. Yet few believed the party could deliver it. Boris’ Conservatives won the 2019 election with a remarkably straightforward message: get Brexit done. Against this backdrop — and even if there may at times be a degree of overcorrection from the leader’s office — Keir Starmer is probably right to be cautious about Labour’s messaging.
The other reason for Starmer’s caution is the transformation Labour must undergo following Corbyn’s disastrous tenure. Just 16% of voters trusted Labour on the economy in 2019 and that was only the half of it. As the Labour MP Liam Byrne wrote following Labour’s defeat, “hundreds of voters I met thought Labour’s leader was a communist terrorist sympathiser who wouldn’t push the nuclear button or sing the national anthem”.
Neil Kinnock had to undertake a similar process of detoxification in the 1980s. Ultimately it wasn’t enough to save his leadership. As a study exploring Labour’s failure at the 1992 election concluded, “Labour lost because it was still the party of the winter of discontent; union influence; strikes and inflation; disarmament; Benn and Scargill.” It took Kinnock and his successors 14 years following Michael Foot’s calamitous spell as leader to turn the party’s fortunes around. Labour’s current leader has four years.
If he is to do that, then Starmer will at some point have to set out Labour’s platform for governing the United Kingdom. It must be sufficiently radical to cater to those hungry for change, while also painting Labour as a prudent and safe pair of hands – the post-Covid landscape will require a degree of economic radicalism whomever is in government.
Preceding that, Starmer must comprehensively trounce the Left or he must bring them onside. He must make that decision one way or another. And he must do all of this while holding the Government to account during most significant national crisis since the Second World War. The more successful Starmer is in the polls, the more wriggle room he will have. If he starts talking about nation, community and belonging — while offering a radical economic prospectus — the soft Left will go with him if they believe he can beat Boris. That will leave the ‘never Starmers’ isolated; it’s easy to imagine a rump of his left-wing opponents noisily forming a doomed break-away project resembling Ken Loach’s Left Unity project of the Miliband years.
But if Boris bounces back after the pandemic, then Starmer may be in trouble. It’s often said that the Labour Party is not ruthless enough in deposing flagging leaders. However, given that Starmer lacks the cult-like following of his predecessor, and after more than a decade in opposition, this particular sacred cow about Labour Party loyalty could yet be slaughtered.
Part of Starmer’s appeal is the aura of functional – perhaps even boring – competence he emits. In contrast with Jeremy Corbyn, a politician indulgently embraced by activists in relatively stable times, Starmer is the sort of person you’d want in charge during a crisis. Measured, stoical and a details-man who is on top of every brief, he has impressed with his forensic probing of the Government’s response to the pandemic. Historical comparisons are often overblown, but Covid-19 has seen the British state face its biggest crisis since the Second World War. As the rebuilding effort gets underway in the coming years, voters may look to a leader whose penumbra of understated competence is magnified by the reflection of his jaunty opposite number.
Starmer has performed a relatively good job during his first year in office. He’s had Boris on the ropes a few times and he’s thus far avoided any glaring errors or scandals. Moreover, people seem to like him. If I had to score him I would give a seven out of 10: much improved but more expected in the coming year. Perhaps it’s no wonder journalists refer to Leader of the Opposition as the hardest job in politics.
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