Starmer’s not done for yet: the man from Oxted needs to tell his aspirational story
“I was born in a little town called Hope, Arkansas… I remember that old two-storey house where I lived with my grandparents.” So begins the voiceover for an ad for Bill Clinton’s campaign for the presidency in 1992. Although the advert only lasts for exactly a minute, Clinton packs in the death of a parent, meeting JFK as a teenager, his ascent to law school, and his return to Arkansas as a politician. The camera cuts from clips of his house, the Capitol and his career back to Bill in his armchair, all starry-eyed and folksy. “Now it’s exhilarating to me to think that as President,” he concludes, “I could help to change all our people’s lives for the better and bring hope back to the American dream.”
The political scientist Drew Westen in The Political Brain called it one of the most effective television commercials in the history of American politics. “Its sole purpose,” he noted, “was to begin creating a set of positive associations to him and narrative about the Man from Hope – framed, from start to finish, in terms of hope and the American dream.” It’s a deceptively simple pitch: the boy from Hope has lived the American dream – now he wants to give America hope so it might dream again.
And yet the overall effect is as magical in political terms as Yes We Can or Take Back Control – the Man from Hope had arrived. He beat the incumbent (no mean feat) George Bush Senior after Bush had served just one term and his brand of centrist politics, for better or worse, would go onto define an age of blue-sky globalism and renewed swagger on the centre-left both in America and here in the UK.
God, the British centre-left could do with some of that swagger now. Following a dire showing at local elections, there is a growing sense that the Labour party may now go the way of all flesh and follow the fate of the traditional social democratic parties of the European Left to be supplanted by the Greens on the left and as an oppositional force by “national conservative” parties of the right. Early on, Keir Starmer polled reasonably well with voters. He had won the right to be heard, pundits concluded, and the public seemed to think he represented a clear enough break with the Corbyn Project.
Over a year on and the Starmer leadership has pretty much tanked. The Tories are back to polling around 45% compared with Labour’s low thirties, and the “don’t knows” hold a healthy lead over Starmer in the “Who would make best PM?” polling stakes. His strategy has been passive. In the first months of the pandemic, Starmer backed the Government at every turn. In the latter half of the year, he climbed in the polls because the pandemic appeared to worsen. The success of the vaccination programme has turned passivity from a useful defensive strategy into a potentially fatal flaw – voters now view Starmer as weak and indecisive.
But all is not lost – Starmer may not be a “natural” politician but he can become an effective and winning operator. To do so, the Man from Oxted, Surrey has to construct a personality cult. Margaret Thatcher was not born a natural politician. She had to painstakingly build a convincing story. From childhood (grocer’s daughter living above the shop), to elevation via hard work and education, to the top of politics, Thatcher deliberately manifested the broadly held aspirations of her day – hard work over laziness, a strong woman taking on the boys’ club, national renewal and optimism in place of graceful decline and sclerosis.
The Man from Oxted, Sir Keir Rodney Starmer, has a richly compelling story to tell. His interview this week with Piers Morgan, in which he talked at length about his family background, his mother’s illness, and his difficult relationship with his father, was clearly designed to make Keir appear more empathetic, less of a cold fish. He needs to relentlessly bring his upbringing, his personality and the success story of his career into the political game.
Oxted grew from a small, Norman village into a comfortable commuter-belt town, mainly after it was drawn into London’s orbit by the railways. In 2008, it was named by the Daily Telegraph as one of Britain’s 20 richest towns. And yet, despite being in Surrey, Oxted doesn’t have the pretensions of Weybridge or Virginia Water – it has turned into an honest and pleasant dormitory for many City workers, and it has a certain, time-worn historical ordinariness. Starmer is from the world explored by Julian Barnes in his debut novel Metroland which is about clever suburban schoolboys who want to get out of there and explore the world, but without abandoning a certain nostalgia. Starmer is a pillar of this society – he ascended from Leeds to Oxford to the Bar to the very top tier of English public life. It’s a Blairite wet dream of a story, and Starmer should make a virtue of it along with his knighthood. Beat the drum, Keir. Hard work can get you anywhere. A good education changes your life.
Then there’s the world he left behind, that ordinary suburban idyll. His picture of his father Rodney, a hardworking toolmaker, who “kept himself to himself” reminds me of Orwell’s wonderful description of the English as a nation of “stamp-collectors, pigeon-fanciers, amateur carpenters, coupon-snippers, darts-players, crossword-puzzle fans”. There is a whole swathe of England that loves keeping itself to itself. Starmer should have a captive audience, since an increasingly authoritarian Tory government is likely to antagonise this individualistic bunch.
The Man from Oxted needs to embrace populism. Because the liberal-left has got used to losing, it has developed a self-righteous patter that right-wing populism is just a cheap political strategy, an elegant hoodwinking of a gullible populace into voting for things it doesn’t really want. But populism simply reflects an age-old logic of democratic politics that applies equally to the left as it does to the right. The left has won when it has been at its most authentically “populist” in the last few decades. Combine simple and clear messages with a charismatic leader who can weld together voters of disparate backgrounds and values, and hey presto, you’re halfway to the White House (or Downing Street).
Biden’s “Wear a Mask” spiel might have been a bit naff, but it crystallised something about Trump that Americans had begun to hate – he relentlessly trivialised a pandemic that by the election had cost hundreds and thousands of American lives. It was nakedly populist and a winning strategy. It consigned “Build that Wall” to the recent past.
The Man from Oxted needs a three-word slogan. I’ll leave that one up to you, Keir, Man from Oxted.