Keir Starmer: boring robot or Labour’s saviour?

“It had taken a long time to arrange this,” says David Lidington, Theresa May’s former de factor deputy, recalling his first formal meeting with Sir Keir Starmer in the cross-party Brexit talks last year.

“He had to be accompanied by two minders from Corbyn’s office, including Seumas Milne. And it was like when you see an ambassador from one of the authoritarian countries – Russia or somewhere – and they come with a minder who’s clearly taking note of what the ambassador is saying rather than what I’m saying. I always got the impression that Seumas was looking from one of us to the other and that probably in his mind, when the revolution came we were both in front of the firing squad – it was just a matter of sequence, not of principle.”

That the former shadow Brexit secretary is neither loved nor trusted by the Corbynite left of the party is well-known. But it hasn’t held him back. This weekend, Sir Keir Starmer has been elected Labour leader by a landslide, winning the leadership of a party that last won a general election in 2005.

Starmer triumphed on the first round, with 275,780 votes (56.2%) of the just over 490,000 people who voted.
Rebecca Long-Bailey won 135,218 votes (27.6%) and
Lisa Nandy 79,597 votes (16.2%). Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner was elected deputy.

Starmer said – in a recorded statement – that being elected was an “honour and a privilege.” Apologising for the “stain” of anti-Semitism that has besmirched Labour, he promised to root it out.

He assumes the leadership of party that has just suffered one of its biggest defeats in nearly a century, in the midst of a global crisis. So who is the man now tasked with leading the official opposition, and does he have any chance of leading his party one day to power?

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For years the most interesting rumour about Starmer outside the corridors of Westminster was the suggestion that he was the inspiration for Colin Firth’s portrayal of human rights lawyer Mark Darcy in Bridget Jones’s Diary. While it seems to be erroneous, this urban myth circulated because it seemed to fit: like Firth’s Darcy, Starmer is smart, well-spoken, somewhat wooden, and the perfect template onto which to project fantasies, whether as Bridget Jones’s of the ideal boyfriend, or Labour members’ notion of the ideal leader.

Stamer’s critics accuse him of vagueness, of flip-flopping, and of a lack of conviction. But the mirror of those same traits is Starmer’s surprising ability to appeal to all sections of his party, even with Labour at its most divided for a generation.

“In my book, that’s to his credit rather than his discredit,” says Douglas Alexander, a cabinet minister under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Alexander, along with various figures from across the political spectrum, compares Starmer to John Smith, who took on the Labour leadership at a similarly dysfunctional time and injected real opposition back into Westminster, paving the way for Blair’s 1997 landslide.

The challenge for Starmer is clear; the comparison, less so. Establishing exactly where Starmer stands is difficult.

“He praised Corbyn’s ‘radicalism’, said he backed him 100 per cent, and was campaigning to make him Prime Minister just a few months ago,” points out Ian Austin, a prominent Corbyn critic and former MP who quit the Labour party in 2019 to serve as an independent. He insists it will take “bold leadership and determined leadership to show the party has really ditched the extremism of the Corbyn years”.

Yet while Starmer has indeed served in Corbyn’s cabinet for three years and run in two elections on the most left-wing, statist platforms in a generation, Labour heavyweights from the Blair and Brown eras insist that he is no Corbynite. He may be left of Labour’s centre ground, but his politics are a far cry from the Momentum cult that has dominated the party since 2015 when Corbyn won.

The man and his statements offer few clues. He has been in the public eye for over a decade since he was appointed director of public prosecutions in 2008. He was Labour’s most prominent figure during the three-year Brexit saga, and he was the frontrunner in the race to replace Corbyn before the contest even officially opened. Despite all this, it is incredibly difficult to pin down where where he fits into Labour’s identity crisis.

Since last December’s election, he has called vaguely for Labour to “be radical”, saying the party “strayed too far from its values” under Blair, and he claims to identify as a socialist. However, he is barely associated with John McDonnell’s endeavour to shift the party dramatically leftwards on the economy, and is considered a ray of hope for those desperate to free Labour of the Corbyn curse.

But that is exactly what’s so remarkable about Starmer: his mysterious ability to evade. In an era where Labour has been defined by division and factionalism, with many long-serving MPs at odds with both the leader’s office and the Momentum activists who have taken over the party machinery, he has managed to walk a tightrope between the ardent Corbynistas and the Blairite moderates.

While never being fully endorsed by either side, he has somehow avoided the attacks suffered by MPs considered disloyal to the Labour leader, without ever being linked too closely to the Corbyn-McDonnell project. Bland he may be, but that blandness has enabled him to emerge virtually unscathed from Labour’s bitter four-year civil war. That in itself is an achievement that suggests a degree of cunning.

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In terms of his background, Starmer’s legal career, polished demeanour, and apparent ability to say the right thing to the right person, may make him reminiscent of Tony Blair, but he has been keen to highlight his left-wing credentials, including his time in the East Surrey Young Socialists and the fact that he was named after Labour founder Keir Hardie. Starmer is still proud of his role in the Wapping newspaper dispute in the 1980s, when thousands of pickets protested Rupert Murdoch’s modernisation of the industry.

And while his glowing trajectory – from a fee-paying grammar school, to Leeds and then Oxford University, to the bar, to silk, to director of public prosecutions, then finally into politics – suggests he is in the mould of elite Labour politicians, the working-class origins of his parents (a nurse and a toolmaker) suggest something else.

Starmer’s supporters say he been pigeon-holed as a liberal metropolitan lawyer. Voters – in focus groups, carried out before the crisis – seemed to find him quite boring and uninspiring. That’s a problem if the perception does not shift, fairly quickly. First impressions tend to stick when it comes the public view of leaders of the opposition.

While his supporters praise his strong convictions demonstrated through decades in the law, his critics can paint a more dubious picture, particularly on the issue of press freedom where he was particularly aggressive during the hacking scandal.

Starmer was director of public prosecutions when journalists were being arrested and charged in the aftermath of the phone-hacking scandal. He has since raged against the “vilification” of Corbyn and other Labour figures; and he was damning about the press following the suicide of Caroline Flack, promising action.  Yet just a week beforehand, Starmer was adopting a saintly pose and condemning Number 10’s decision to bar certain lobby journalists from government briefings, urging the Cabinet Office to investigate and calling the exclusion of reporters “damaging to democracy”. What is it he wants – a tighter grip on the media, or freedom and protections for the press?

It is hard to discern precisely where he stands on any issue other than Brexit – which he opposed vocally, having championed Britain’s links with Europe his entire life. The fact that he was instrumental in Labour’s transition to a pro-referendum stance, widely blamed as having contributed to the party’s humiliating defeat in December, appears to have been forgotten by the membership.

In conversations with friends, colleagues, and even former rivals, one word keeps cropping up: credibility. Whatever Starmer believes, there is hope across the party that he can restore Labour’s reputation as a party that could one day govern.

Is this likely?

After four years of Corbyn lurching from blunder to gaffe to scandal, the prospect of Starmer’s ruthlessness and forensic attention to detail marks a welcome change for Labour. But it is complicated, when the country is at war against an invisible enemy.

“Keir will come to the leadership at a time when, understandably, given the Covid-19 crisis, there’s a real premium on competence and authority,” Douglas Alexander says. “And Keir will start his leadership with both competence and authority.”

Lidington also recalls Starmer’s impressive ability to build relationships with counterparts in the EU during the Brexit talks. That flair for networking, he says, could serve him well – and is a marked contrast to Corbyn’s refusal to work with those he disagreed with. “If he can bring that over into domestic politics, he stands a good chance of rebuilding Labour’s credibility.”

As for his oratory skill and lawyer’s ability to think on his feet, those of course matter, as does the general perception that he just “feels” like a leader, certainly when compared to Corbyn. It is likely a major reason why party members, confronted with the option of two young, female northern candidates, opted instead for white male lawyer from London.

But even if he is competent performer, various former cabinet ministers caution that a good day at PMQs in the Commons – where he will be forensic against Boris Johnson – does not necessarily translate into public support. Probing the government is vital, of course, but having a clear strategy and being able to capture the imagination of voters counts for far more than catching the Prime Minister out.

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His strategy is unclear – although in his opening speech on Saturday morning, he emphasised that after the crisis workers in the NHS must come first with pay rises. The crisis, he suggested, points the way to a return to Labour.

But with the country in crisis, now is clearly not the time for a big philosophical programme setting out Labour’s vision – there simply isn’t the political bandwidth.

Nor is this the moment for a Corbyn-esque insistence that the Conservative government’s emergency measures – embarking upon the greatest state intervention ever seen in peacetime – indicate that the public has suddenly warmed to the Corbyn-McDonnell agenda in general.

And while Alexander is optimistic that Keir’s election “marks an important first step on the longer road to recovery”, right now that road for Labour appears endless. The route back to power involves winning 120 seats, rebuilding two “red walls” (in Scotland and in the north of the England), and coming up with an offering that will resonate with a country undergoing seismic economic and social shifts, just when the Conservatives have taken over the centre-ground. The latest opinion polls show the Tories scoring more than 50% of the vote.

Offering promises to “level up” the nation, a spending splurge on infrastructure and investment, and help for Labour’s former heartlands, Boris Johnson’s Conservatives appeared invincible before the coronavirus pandemic struck. It is hard to see – yet – what gap there is to fill, or whether Starmer’s “all things to all people” approach can survive contact with reality.

No wonder, then, that many in Labour are calling for Starmer to turn his focus first behind the scenes: getting the Labour house in order, particularly when it comes to the anti-semitism scandals that have dogged the party almost since Corbyn became leader. He will be judged on the promise he made this weekend to take action.

Labour figures such as John Mann and Liz Kendall have already urged Starmer to act quickly and decisively, pursuing the “zero tolerance” strategy that Corbyn could not pursue because some of the worst offenders were Corbynite ultras.

“The public will want to see tough action and a new process to tackle antisemitism,” warns Austin. “All the racists must be booted out, including those whose cases were swept under the carpet under Corbyn.”

If Starmer wants to signal a new era for Labour and disassociate himself from the failed regime he has been a part of, taking a firm line on anti-semitism from the start would show the public who he is – or, more importantly – who he isn’t.

The mood among Labour exiles is that Starmer must use his honeymoon period to ensure that he has people he trusts across the party machinery.

“Unity” was his watchword during the leadership contest, and his campaign team was staffed by representatives from across the Blairite-Corbynista spectrum. All eyes now turn to the make-up of his shadow cabinet, and whether it will include leading Corbynistas, most notably the “continuity Corbyn” candidate Rebecca Long-Bailey.

But Corbyn critics are clear that the message of “unity” cannot translate into keeping in post those who orchestrated Labour’s defeat in December, and the  grip of shadowy Momentum figures who pushed the party ever-leftwards, despite the warnings of the polls, needs to be broken. Although leftwing voices have warned against the suggestion of a “purge”, the Corbynistas’ success in assuming control of levers of power across the party, from local constituency groups to the ruling national executive committee, means that the new leader will struggle if he doesn’t establish his authority quickly.

As Blair’s former political secretary John McTernan put it, quoting an Australian Labor maxim: “Magnanimity in defeat, vengeance in victory”.

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Assuming the divided Labour party can be put back together, how can the new leader demonstrate that he has the ability to govern that his two most recent predecessors – Ed Miliband and Corbyn – lacked?

Starmer’s best chance at proving his worth may be the very crisis currently gripping the nation. A government that seemed invincible six weeks ago is now faced with impossible challenges, and is in clear need of both scrutiny and cross-party support.

What has been lacking since the election is any kind of opposition. Obviously, now is not the time to play politics with people’s lives, to paraphrase former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, but one former shadow cabinet minister suggests that Starmer’s role should be that of a “critical friend”, asking intelligent questions “in the spirit of supportiveness”: on the lack of testing capacity, on the difficulties individuals and businesses have had accessing financial support, on the impact of authoritarian measures as the lockdown continues. These are issues that the public desperately want clarified, and the role of the opposition leader is to nudge the government into answering.

The problem with Corbyn, even before he became a lame duck leader, was that he was clearly not interested in being listened to by anyone outside his inner circle of fans. While he was quite happy to share platforms with representatives of terror groups as a backbencher, he refused to work with David Cameron on the Remain campaign in 2016, and showed precious little interest in collaborating with either May or the moderate Tory rebels during the Brexit wars that followed. This week, he warned Labour not to join in a national unity government to tackle the coronavirus crisis, threatening to oppose from the back benches if the new leader tried it.

But with parliament out of action, there is a clear argument for the opposition being involved in decision making, even if a national unity government looks unlikely. Starmer can push to join Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and London Mayor Sadiq Khan at key coronavirus Cobra meetings, taking the opportunity to demonstrate that he is everything Corbyn was not: collaborative, cool in a crisis, forensic on details, and able to adapt and show leadership at crucial moments.

And while comparisons between coronavirus and the Second World War are overblown, Starmer might do well to remember Clement Attlee’s work with Churchill. After five years serving in Churchill War Cabinet, Attlee went into the 1945 election having cemented his leadership credentials, immune to the usual accusations that opposition candidates are lightweights who lack government experience. If Starmer can help the Conservatives steer Britain through the Covid-19 pandemic, he may repair much of the damage done to Labour under Corbyn, refuting the current widely-held view that the party is not fit for government.

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“From the country’s point of view and from the Conservatives’ point of view, we need to have an effective opposition,” says Lidington. “The absence of an opposition means that governments can become complacent and lazy.”

Now more than ever, with decisions being made every day that will affect people’s lives and livelihoods for decades to come, complacency is a luxury that the country cannot afford.

For the past five years, Labour has been run by a career activist, more interested in ideals than results. Now, it has at the helm a human rights barrister who has spent decades challenging those in positions of power, on everything from libel to police brutality.

So far, Starmer has succeeded by striking the right balance between different factions of his party. Now he must walk a similar tightrope, holding the government to account on the toughest of issues while working with Downing Street to save lives and get us through this crisis, for the good of the nation.

“The government will be better in having an opposition that they can’t simply dismiss and that is asking sharp questions,” Lidington says.

Labour must hope Starmer is up to the task.