Starmer and the limits of keeping quiet

For those Labour supporters desperate for effective leadership, Starmer looked the part. First, he removed Rebecca Long-Bailey after she cornered herself by liking a tweet condoning an antisemitic conspiracy theory - a man with brawn as well as brains. He beats Johnson at PMQs for fun. Then, in a game akin to school ground noughts and crosses, he consistently out-thinks his opponent on Covid-19 measures.

Yet for all this, the polls have only moved sluggishly in his direction. The party stands roughly neck and neck with the Conservatives (39% - 39% according to the latest YouGov poll [1]). It would appear a ceiling has been reached. Labour can no longer depend on its enemy to donate popularity points.

We are now down to the much tougher votes to win. Proving his competence will not be enough. He must go much further. He must prove himself on the bigger issues of the day - on which elections are won. Opinion is divided on how well he is doing.

The more positive commentary portrays Starmer as a clever strategist. By avoiding the obvious traps set for him, he has denied his opponents the ammunition they, and the right-wing media, need to blast him with. In a game played on a very lopsided field, he has stayed clear of trouble. His careful approach has marked him out as a much more diligent operator than his predecessor.

For the first few months at least, this  analysis was the dominant view. It was only seriously opposed by the left wing of the party, still in thrall to Corbyn. Starmer had made a sound and promising start.

Criticism though has begun to surface, and not just from the left of the party. The belief that  his cautious approach was paying dividends has given way to disappointment. This more negative commentary became openly sceptical when Starmer decided to whip his MPs in favour of the Brexit deal.

The Brexit vote marked a turning point for many. His reluctance to oppose the government, further evidenced by a previous decision to abstain on the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (CHIS) Bill, or “spy cops bill”, converged with other concerns. Why was he not taking the government apart on corruption, cronyism and massive incompetence? Why on Brexit did he conclude:

We’ve left the EU and the remain/leave argument is over. Amongst the reasons for voting for the deal is to allow that closure. [2]

Anyone who has read anything on Brexit will know that "closure" is a laughably improbable outcome. David Allen Green [3] described the deal as "a dynamic agreement, capable of enabling closer union (or less close union) over time." At best, Starmer had indulged in some horrendous wishful thinking.

The more negative account of his reluctance to take up arms tallies with the suspicion that his strategy is not merely pragmatic, but is a self-conscious tilt towards social conservatism. Uppermost on his mind is likely the "red wall" voters, who thanks to our decrepit FPTP system, dominate the thinking of both parties. He has been at pains to prove to them that Labour has "listened".

To understand why Labour might be thinking this way, the appointment of Claire Ainsley as Executive Director of Policy is illuminating. According to the right-wing UnHerd, the appointment "made us sit up and take notice" [4]. She was previously an author with BrexitCentral, a pro-Leave website edited by Matthew Elliott. From her book The New Working Class: How to Win Hearts, Minds and Votes it is not difficult to work out her position on Brexit. She wrote:

If this book had been written prior to the EU referendum in June 2016, the main recommendation on democracy could conceivably have been to move powers back to Britain from the EU.

The book itself is based on the Great British Class Survey, which divides people up into categories in order to decide, rather arbitrarily, what social class they belong to. From that she then extrapolated policies based on what the working class people, according to her own definition of who they are, said they wanted.

There was no hint of a guiding principle. It was more like a marketing exercise, reminiscent in some ways to how Dominic Cummings used focus groups. It was a methodology almost guaranteed to reproduce existing belief structures, not lead them.

What is missing from Starmer, and the Labour Party, is any clear sense of where this takes us. He was unequivocally pro-European. Now he is ambivalent. It is hard to pick out any compelling narrative. This was also true of Ainsley's book.

The Brexit issue cannot be wished away. That much should be obvious. Yet Starmer seems afraid to even mention it by name. He is risking the perception that he stands for nothing. A wishy-washy leader with no principles. These are not the credentials to win over those red wall voters.

The disappointment felt by his supporters, some of whom joined the party to vote for him, coincides with a period of unparalleled misrule. Never has a government been so brazenly contemptuous of its people. Yet Starmer seems unable to comprehend this. As Fintan O'Toole [5] pointed out, there is a method to how democracies are overturned. If we are seeing this happen here, it quite obviously needs to be fiercely opposed.

He cannot hope to beat the Conservatives by dressing in their clothes, or by keeping quiet, or even by being more competent. He has to build a compelling narrative he is proud to own, preferably not assembled from the glossary of a marketing book. And he must oppose the Tories explicitly on the assault they are making on democracy. He, and his cabinet, need to stop being so nice and start throwing some punches.

References

[1] https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/11/voting-intention-con-39-lab-39-4-5-jan
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/29/labour-will-not-seek-major-changes-to-uks-relationship-with-eu-keir-starmer/
[3] https://davidallengreen.com/2020/12/this-agreement-is-not-the-end-of-brexit-it-is-a-five-year-political-truce/
[4] https://unherd.com/thepost/meet-claire-ainsley-keir-starmers-intriguing-new-head-of-policy/
[5] https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-trial-runs-for-fascism-are-in-full-flow-1.3543375