July 31, 2023 - 10:45am
Has Sir Keir Starmer lost his bottle? Mail on Sunday columnist Dan Hodges thinks so, referring to the Labour leader as “gripped by fear”. How else can one explain the unforced retreats of recent weeks?
For instance, there was the U-turn on the two-child benefit cap — a Tory austerity measure that everyone thought Labour would scrap. We can’t afford to, concluded Starmer, thus earning himself a new soubriquet from the online Left: “Sir Kid Starver”. Then there’s his readiness to blame the Ulez expansion for Labour’s failure to win the Uxbridge by-election. The party leader can’t actually order Sadiq Khan to rethink this policy, but he’s putting him under intense pressure to do so. Most recently, the Shadow Cabinet has reversed its stance on transgender issues. We don’t yet know whether Starmer still believes in the male cervix, but at least Rosie Duffield has received an apology (albeit from Wes Streeting rather than Starmer himself).
Is all of this just fancy footwork from a clever politician? Or is Hodges right to describe Starmer’s recent re-positioning as a “series of panicked spasms”. Really, a closer look shows that the Labour leader has every reason to be afraid.
First of all, the by-election results suggest that it’s voter discontent, not love for Labour, which explains the latter’s lead in the polls. In Uxbridge, it didn’t take much to redirect this unhappiness.
As for the child benefit U-turn, Starmer realises what many of his MPs have yet to accept, which is that, financially, the next Labour government is already stuffed. It’s all in the latest “Fiscal Risks and Sustainability” report from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The gist is that Britain is broke for the next fifty years. It’s not just unfunded tax cuts off the agenda, but unfunded spending commitments too.
Denied the opportunity to splash the cash, one option for Starmer could be to go broke for woke instead, placating the progressive Left wing of his party. Yet the more that the public gets to hear about the trans agenda, the less they like it — hence Labour’s reverse ferret on the issue.
And yet for all the back-pedalling of recent weeks, it would be a mistake to confuse Starmer’s state of mind with panic. Panicking people behave chaotically, but there’s clearly method in Sir Keir’s madness. Realising that a storm lies ahead of him, he’s jettisoning everything he doesn’t need while he still can.
This is the least worst time to do so. Yes, he’s upsetting his colleagues — but he can console them with a twenty-point Labour lead. As for disappointing the public by dropping spending pledges, that’s best done before he puts them in a manifesto.
Starmer is not a man of excessive conviction. He’s not a visionary or a prophet or a great communicator. But he is an accomplished tactician. He understands that it will never be easier for him to make difficult decisions than it is now. So, for the moment, expect the fancy footwork to continue.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeI suspect that 2024 will not be a good election to win. When the wheels come off this ramshackle buggy of a country, you don’t want to be in the driving seat – People will blame you.
I think you’re right, just as 1992 was a very good election to lose. Major was incompetent enough to win – or, more precisely, he was insufficiently eurosceptic enough to realise that forcing the pound to shadow the deutschemark was bound to end in tears.
I think you’re right, just as 1992 was a very good election to lose. Major was incompetent enough to win – or, more precisely, he was insufficiently eurosceptic enough to realise that forcing the pound to shadow the deutschemark was bound to end in tears.
I suspect that 2024 will not be a good election to win. When the wheels come off this ramshackle buggy of a country, you don’t want to be in the driving seat – People will blame you.
An unfunded tax cut is a conceptual nonsense. Allowing we poor, benighted taxpayers to keep a little more of our money doesn’t require funding. It’s the spending that’s unfunded. Doh!
An unfunded tax cut is a conceptual nonsense. Allowing we poor, benighted taxpayers to keep a little more of our money doesn’t require funding. It’s the spending that’s unfunded. Doh!
‘Gender’ ideology, extreme ‘green’ policies, and handing over more taxpayers’ money to benefit claimants to reward uncontrolled breeding are all vastly unpopular in working class communities, particularly the’Red Wall’. This will have become apparent from focus groups on what Labour has to do to win back those constituencies.
It really isn’t complicated. The question is whether or not it is genuine. The real U-turns are likely to be after they’ve won.
‘Gender’ ideology, extreme ‘green’ policies, and handing over more taxpayers’ money to benefit claimants to reward uncontrolled breeding are all vastly unpopular in working class communities, particularly the’Red Wall’. This will have become apparent from focus groups on what Labour has to do to win back those constituencies.
It really isn’t complicated. The question is whether or not it is genuine. The real U-turns are likely to be after they’ve won.
The latest horror story is that Keir Starmer would not abolish the bedroom tax, so what is the Labour Party for? It arose out of the determination of the economically productive classes of what was then the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world, first to explain their poverty, and then to defeat it. If there was one thing about which all Labour people really did used to agree, then it was that the State had a duty to eradicate child poverty.
Even if you took the hardline Blairite view that from the day that you embarked on adult life, you were solely responsible for what you did with your Sure Start, then you were emphatic that you were entitled to it in the first place, and in fact the last Labour Government did a great deal about child poverty, the fight against which was the driving passion of Gordon Brown’s political life. What is there to Labour now? Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.
Rubbish. The Labour Party was created to be the political wing of the trade union movement. Trade unions are organisations set up by and for working people. That means people who work, not people who live off the taxes paid by working people.
Most working class people support measures to restrict benefits. They would prefer to see them made contributory only, except for the severely disabled from birth.
The way to address child poverty is to rejuvenate the Sure Start centres with the aims of firmly encouraging family planning and work. Restricting benefits is only one strand of this. There needs to be education and skills training for the parents, along with support to lose weight, deal with addiction and learn how to cook properly. Unions need to stop obsessing about ‘identity’ and start developing plans to recruit and represent people on low pay and zero hours contracts, then running campaigns to improve their pay and conditions.
Work, self-discipline, self-reliance and responsibility for children must be instilled in those dependent on benefits. Imaginary ‘conditions’ like ‘anxiety’, ‘fibromyalgia’ and ‘Long Covid’ must be disregarded and a set timescale given for each person, including single mothers, to prepare to go into work and take responsibility for their own children. The taxpayer is already paying for their education and healthcare, both of which probably cost more than they do for the children of working people, with lower outcomes. We shouldn’t be funding their upkeep too.
I do not dispute that there has always been a hardline Tory 40 to 45 per cent of the working class, as you articulate. No one has ever been less likely to vote Labour under any circumstance. Although I am not sure what your objection to doing so would be now. But you are still not going to vote for Labour. Cue rubbish about having done so all your life until Corbyn or whatever. I know that that is not true.
How about making the fathers of said children of single mothers start taking responsibility? Far too many men just say “have a free legal abortion, and if you don’t do that it’s on you”!
I do not dispute that there has always been a hardline Tory 40 to 45 per cent of the working class, as you articulate. No one has ever been less likely to vote Labour under any circumstance. Although I am not sure what your objection to doing so would be now. But you are still not going to vote for Labour. Cue rubbish about having done so all your life until Corbyn or whatever. I know that that is not true.
How about making the fathers of said children of single mothers start taking responsibility? Far too many men just say “have a free legal abortion, and if you don’t do that it’s on you”!
Rubbish. The Labour Party was created to be the political wing of the trade union movement. Trade unions are organisations set up by and for working people. That means people who work, not people who live off the taxes paid by working people.
Most working class people support measures to restrict benefits. They would prefer to see them made contributory only, except for the severely disabled from birth.
The way to address child poverty is to rejuvenate the Sure Start centres with the aims of firmly encouraging family planning and work. Restricting benefits is only one strand of this. There needs to be education and skills training for the parents, along with support to lose weight, deal with addiction and learn how to cook properly. Unions need to stop obsessing about ‘identity’ and start developing plans to recruit and represent people on low pay and zero hours contracts, then running campaigns to improve their pay and conditions.
Work, self-discipline, self-reliance and responsibility for children must be instilled in those dependent on benefits. Imaginary ‘conditions’ like ‘anxiety’, ‘fibromyalgia’ and ‘Long Covid’ must be disregarded and a set timescale given for each person, including single mothers, to prepare to go into work and take responsibility for their own children. The taxpayer is already paying for their education and healthcare, both of which probably cost more than they do for the children of working people, with lower outcomes. We shouldn’t be funding their upkeep too.
The latest horror story is that Keir Starmer would not abolish the bedroom tax, so what is the Labour Party for? It arose out of the determination of the economically productive classes of what was then the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world, first to explain their poverty, and then to defeat it. If there was one thing about which all Labour people really did used to agree, then it was that the State had a duty to eradicate child poverty.
Even if you took the hardline Blairite view that from the day that you embarked on adult life, you were solely responsible for what you did with your Sure Start, then you were emphatic that you were entitled to it in the first place, and in fact the last Labour Government did a great deal about child poverty, the fight against which was the driving passion of Gordon Brown’s political life. What is there to Labour now? Nothing. Absolutely nothing at all.
Virtually zero mainstream media interest in the Office of Budget Responsibility’s latest report. No woke propaganda points to be derived from reading it.
Virtually zero mainstream media interest in the Office of Budget Responsibility’s latest report. No woke propaganda points to be derived from reading it.
Back to the servants hall with you, Starmer…
Back to the servants hall with you, Starmer…
You’re right. He’s not a man of vision. Sadly, it is a leader with a national vision we need right now, not another bean-counter or expert in red-tape and obfuscation.
You’re right. He’s not a man of vision. Sadly, it is a leader with a national vision we need right now, not another bean-counter or expert in red-tape and obfuscation.
A very adept summary of a clever politician.
A very adept summary of a clever politician.
.