Platitudinous Ten Pledges define Starmer’s lack of boldness

Life is supposed to be tough when you’re on top but the current Labour leadership frontrunner Keir Starmer seems determined to avoid this dictum at all costs. Today he released his Ten Pledges that were supposed to define his candidacy. They read like the checklist of a man seeking an easy life. A bizarre mix of platitudes no Labour member would disagree with, they are essentially a promise that he won’t rock the sinking ship.

The first three pledges are simple and vague enough – “Economic justice”, “Social justice”, “Climate justice” – the content ripped from the pages of Labour’s failed manifesto at the 2019 election. When you’re calling for one more heave usually it means another push for victory, not oblivion. Still, perhaps there is a genius to this approach as it taps straight into the Freudian political-death wish that seems to have animated Labour members and Corbynism over the past few years.

The wearisome repetition of “justice” reminds us that Starmer was a lawyer. His supporters fondly imagine that his time as Director of Public Prosecutions lend him credibility, but lawyers have been loathed since time immemorial. Shakespeare had a character declare: “The first thing we do [in power], let’s kill all the lawyers”

Perhaps this legalist instinct lies behind his “Promote peace and human rights” pledge – adjacent to the strange promise to introduce a Prevention of Military Intervention Act.

Doomed quests to make war illegal have long been a feature of a certain type of liberal politics. Alternatively, this pledge might come from some strange desire to fend off Richard Burgon’s somnambulist campaign for the deputy leadership. In any case what the law would mean is helpfully left unsaid – and is likely moot anyway as any government bent on launching a war could just immediately repeal the law. Perhaps it’s the thought that counts, but no thought seems to have gone into this.

This tendency towards the bromidic also pervades the Starmer pledges for “Common ownership”, Strengthening “worker’s rights”, and “Equality”. Sure, the Labour base needs red meat sometimes but the pledges here are so bland they’re basically unflavoured chicken. The pledge for “Radical devolution” also barely counts as radical when by now devolution is basically a cross-party consensus. Even Conservatives now rail against Westminster in the name of the left-behind regions and emit occasional rumbles about radically reforming the House of Lords.

Bringing this pile of holy mouthed party pieties to an end is the most vacuous pledge of all – “Effective opposition to the Tories”. It would truly be a bold candidate who promised to be ineffectual, impotent, and chaotic – though what could be a better way to assure the Labour membership he dares not risk offending that he does not plan to stray too far from the values of Corbynism.