Last July, the British people elected a Labour government, largely in despair at the Conservative Party’s repeated failure to govern as conservatives.
So it might seem that disappointment was inevitable. Having acquired office through little more than a Buggins’ turn in the wrong direction, centre-left Labour is now failing to deliver the centre-right administration the UK generally desires.
As this conundrum sinks in, the party’s polling has sunk like a stone. YouGov has Labour at 26 per cent, just one point clear of Nigel Farage’s Reform. The Tories are in third place at 22 per cent. Frustration with both Westminster’s mainstream parties could see their duopoly break down.
Yet disappointment is not inevitable.
Starmer’s political image increasingly at odds with a public mood turning against liberal causes
Conor Murphy’s puzzling move to the Seanad crystallises sense of an unsettled Stormont
Daft Brexit rules have brought havoc for the Alliance Party as well as Northern shoppers
Stormont staggers on, mostly because no one can agree on an alternative
Providing natural Tory voters with an alternative to the Tories is a trick Labour has pulled off before. In 1997, Tony Blair swept into office not because the electorate had moved left, but because the Conservatives were exhausted after 18 years in power.
To the cognoscenti, Blair spoke of “modernised social democracy”. His unspoken promise to the public was Labour stealing Tory clothes.
British prime minister Keir Starmer wants to take a similar approach. He has appointed veterans of the Blair years to key positions and adopted some Blairite policies, such as making more use of private finance in public investment.
Blair is a divisive figure after the Iraq War and of course every leader wants to define their own legacy, so Starmer was never likely to promote himself as the direct “heir to Blair”.
But creating his own brand of triangulation is clearly the plan. Alas, that plan is falling apart.
Labour’s troubles began with a manifesto pledge not to raise income taxes or VAT for “working people”.
To fund agreed public sector pay increases, chancellor Rachel Reeves instead put up employer’s national insurance, a tax on jobs. This has snuffed out a nascent economic recovery and increased government borrowing costs, undoing everything she was trying to achieve.
It demonstrated a pragmatic ruthlessness that Starmer cannot seem to project
The Blairite solution would have been to stiff the unions over pay rises or impose conditions on staffing levels and productivity.
In 1997, Blair had promised trade unions extra rights in return for keeping Margaret Thatcher’s strike restrictions. Once elected, he added small print that made the rights worthless, over-ruling his employment minister in cabinet. This was no less cynical than Reeves’ legalistic honouring of the manifesto. It demonstrated a pragmatic ruthlessness that Starmer cannot seem to project.
The UK suffered its worst race riots in a generation within weeks of the July 4th election. Labour has been caught up ever since in toxic tensions over integration, immigration and justice.
This misfortune has a precedent: in 2001, race riots with remarkably similar features flared across the north of England in the weeks immediately before and after Blair’s first re-election.
He blamed the initial trouble on the far right, but kept aloof from accusations it had been sparked by Conservative comments against immigration. As violence spread, Blair and his home secretary David Blunkett condemned both sides, supported a police crackdown and demanded community leaders take responsibility.
While it may be to his credit that he refused to humour the concerns of racist rioters, he has suffered for it as a politician
Last year’s rioting was overwhelmingly one-sided, making it harder for Starmer to “balance” his response.
Nevertheless, he struggled to send a mix of messages that conveyed authority and understanding. While it may be to his credit as a person that he refused to humour the concerns of racist rioters, he has suffered for it as a politician.
Blair was able to present himself not just as on everyone’s side, but as on their side against reactionary forces inside the Labour Party.
Starmer has not mastered this Machiavellian signalling, despite having purged his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn and much of the hard left around him.
The Labour leader only entered parliament in 2015; he could legitimately portray himself as the outsider who restored a great party. It seems like a bizarre failure of communication that much of the public sees him as the epitome of a political insider.
Starmer’s former career as a human rights lawyer is increasingly offered as the explanation for his liberal establishment views. This is rarely meant as a compliment.
A London Times editorial on Tuesday blamed it for his “bien pensant” haste to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. It puts Starmer’s image at odds with a political mood turning against “woke” causes and he is doing nothing to take the edge off that perception.
Figures close to Starmer say he sees himself as less “ideological” than Blair, being a late entrant to party politics.
The problem with being less ideological is that more depends on your managerial competence. Fail to deliver material improvement and you have failed completely.
At least people know what a struggling ideologue is trying to do.