I am sure I am not the only person who finds Sir Keir Starmer a very perplexing politician. The main reason being is that his utterances are frequently joyless and depressing. I often think he would feel right at home in the Puritan Interregnum, cancelling Christmas.
His speech on Tuesday in the Rose Garden of Downing Street was a case in point. It is usual for any new leader to arrive and proclaim everything is worse than expected, blaming their predecessor.
But Sir Keir seems to dislike the country itself, proclaiming that we live in a “deeply unhealthy society” which has been “infected by populism” and “weakened by a decade of division and decline, infected by a spiral of populism feeding off cycles of failure.”
The system is rotten, we are told, and the public finances in a catastrophic state, necessitating a painful Budget in October. “How far we have fallen,” he lamented. Only such a Budget can help fill “the societal black hole”.
I personally do not find this sort of “drain the swamp” rhetoric attractive. Even Unite, the second largest union, issued a statement suggesting Sir Keir offered “a bleak vision for the country”.
It is true that Britain has problems, too numerous to mention, which need clearing up. And that the public realm is in disrepair, with consistently declining productivity in the public sector and a lack of public and business investment. But we should have confidence that these issues can be remedied.
Labour’s policies of more public spending, tax rises, nationalisation, and a sprint to net zero are unlikely to help. I would say they are reminiscent of the 1970s, but at least that was a golden age of British comedy.
Meanwhile, over in the bond markets, gilt yields are a normalised at 3.9% and the economic surveys suggest that prices in the shops are actually falling even as activity recovers faster than expected. And yesterday, the only announcement on the No.10 website was, somewhat quaintly, entitled “The King has approved the nomination of The Right Reverend Dr Timothy Wambunya to the Suffragan See of Wolverhampton in the Diocese of Lichfield”.
Things are not that bad.
By contrast, in the United States, the Democrats have a spring in their steps. When she accepted the party nomination to be candidate for the Presidency, Kamala Harris’s speech was not only full of optimism, but devoid of the sort of woke rhetoric which has bedevilled Democratic conventions in recent years. She seems to be running as a post-woke candidate.
She said she sees her candidacy as an “opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past. A chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”
She knows that America is ultimately a country which thrives on optimism and risk. Indeed, the two things are connected. Optimism about their system and their society encourages people to adopt a growth mindset, knowing that the risks they take will not be exacerbated by things beyond their control, such as arbitrary regulation, tax rises or inflation. It is hard to see investors and entrepreneurs being encouraged by Sir Keir’s gloomy prognosis or his socialist medicine.
In just a few weeks, the US election has gone from being a certainty that Donald Trump would win to being too close to call. It is not hard to see why.
George Trefgarne is CEO and founder of Boscobel & Partners, an independent communications and political consultancy
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