Unlike Attlee, Wilson and Blair, Starmer doesn’t offer enough exciting change
The political class is preparing for long months of hard pounding and constant tension. Yet if you believed the opinion polls, the tension would be unnecessary. Surely Labour has a large enough lead to guarantee success? But few people appear to believe that. Paradoxically, it seems easier to discover Tories who think that it is all over than comfortable optimists in Labour ranks.
In the run-up to the 1997 Election, the then Labour MP Austin Mitchell – always good company – said that his Party could sleep-walk its way to power. He was proved right. But hardly anyone in Labour circles talks that way today. On the Labour body politic, the scars of previous defeats cut deep. Equally, everyone remembers that Theresa May went into her election with a seventeen-point lead, against Jeremy Corbyn. If the Grenfell Tower fire had been a week earlier, there would have been a hung Parliament.
On some points, there is a lot of reluctant agreement across the political divide and an acceptance that many voters are fed up with politics and politicians. There is a lot of volatility around and a lot less stolid tribalism. As in all recent elections, the gladiatorial combat between the two leaders will be crucial and both sides are now trying to wargame their strategies.
The Tories seem to believe that Keir Starmer is vulnerable, in two principal respects. First, he is dull. Second, he is much more left wing than he now feels it safe to admit. There is talk of trawling through all his cases during his days as Director of Public Prosecutions to find instances of unjustified leniency: soft on crime, soft on the perpetrators of crime. That would not be a spectacle for the high-minded. It brings back memories of Willie Horton, a case which George Bush senior was able to hang around Michael Dukakis’s neck during the 1988 Presidential race. That also led to tut-tutting among those who would have preferred a more thoughtful approach to criminal justice. But Mr Bush won.
That said, it might not be wise to use the same methods on Sir Keir. An all-out attack could well alienate sensitive potential Tory voters: there are some. It could also fail to convince a large section of the public, who will simply not believe that he is a rabid Leftie bent on unlocking all the cell doors. A subtler approach might be wiser. Keir Starmer has extolled the moral case for socialism. What does that mean? This can be linked in to his stance on the culture wars. Presumably he now accepts that a man cannot have a cervix or a woman a penis. So what made him change his mind? In all this, mockery would be more effective than pure abuse: try the rapier, not the bludgeon.
This brings us to a basic question. What does the Labour leader actually believe? There, we have to rely on intuition – so here goes. I suspect that he is indeed much more socialist than his current statements would disclose. He believes in a large measure of equality and does not believe that markets could be trusted to deliver humane outcomes. He would also like to undo Brexit.
But he also believes in making compromises with the electorate. This is partly because he has come to despise many aspects of contemporary Toryism, especially Boris Johnson. I think that he would insist that a Party which spawned Boris deserves to be punished, not re-elected. He would go on to say that a Labour Party which jeopardised its prospects of victory by taking unpopular stances would be betraying its trust, and its duty to those who need a Labour government.
He might go on to argue that the way to make the case for socialism is not by abstract theoretical arguments in opposition but by success in government. There is a comparison with the late Geoffrey Howe. Geoffrey, a dear man, was also a Euro-maniac and as such, chronically and systematically intellectually dishonest. For him, Europhilia was the love that dare not speak its name.
He appeared to accept that there was no hope of persuading the electorate to the contrary, unless they could be led to discover that In practice, ever-closer union with the EU would work out well. One could use an analogy with a sick child which was refusing to take its medicine. So: distract the brat and then suddenly slip a teaspoon of the needful into its gob. While it is spluttering, reward it with a sweet, saying, ‘There, there: what was all the fuss about? That wasn’t too bad, was it?’ In Sir Keir’s case, refuse to stand by any policy which might upset all but the very rich and assure the rest that by socialism, he meant stopping to help old grannies cross the street.
There is a key factor in all this. ‘Time for a change’ is the most potent phrase in British politics. Labour believe that it is indeed their most powerful weapon. But they have a problem. Attlee, Wilson, Blair: there was a sense of New Jerusalem, of enthusiasm, of excitement. Sir Stumbler? No excitement there. This gives the Tories an opportunity. There is a young, new politician who does offer excitement and change. He may have been in office, but a lot of voters have still not reckoned with – Rishi Sunak. He has to tell them who he is and what he believes.
Above all, he must not restrict himself to negativity. By all means deploy attack-dogs: Kemi Badenoch would be an excellent choice. But use the Prime Minister to win intellectual arguments, especially on the NHS and the environment, where the government has some thoughtful policies – though housing still appears much less thought-through.
After fourteen years, it will not be easy for the Tories to claim that they are the party of change. But as they have no electoral alternative, they just have to get on with it, and it ought to be much harder for Labour to dress up their man as a harbinger of a new dispensation. Sir Stumbler would be justified in proclaiming that he is a much more decent man than Boris Johnson. But that is hardly a unique attribute. Nor is it enough.
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