Kier Starmer has made a very disappointing start. That, I am afraid, is undeniable. I'm sure he is an honourable man, but he is far more a manager than a leader. You need to be an egomaniac to want to become party leader and he's far from that. In normal times he would have been a decent prime minister and might have made some solid improvements to how we’re governed and kept the economy on an even keel. He might have gone down in history as an unremarkable technocrat, a safe pair of hands in the John Major mould. Unfortunately for him, these are not normal times. The right is on the march across the world, encouraged and supported by Putin and soon-to-be US President again Donald Trump.
Starmer would have been better as a No 2 to someone with charisma and vision. Someone able to ‘sell’ a vision of a brighter future but he just doesn’t have it.
That after just five months the new prime minister needed what is being portrayed as a 'reset' shows how ill-prepared he was. He has been forced to give a speech, 'Plan for Change,' at Pinewood Studios and face a hostile press impatient for improvements. The speech sets out "measurable milestones" and follows hard on the heels of the Labour manifesto. If that wasn't a plan for change what was it?
Jonathan Freedland writes in The Guardian that Sir Kier and his government 'must not fail' because if they do, voters will opt for stronger medicine and Nigel Farage is waiting in the wings, fancying himself as the man who could administer it.
That is perhaps a fair assessment but it won’t prevent Starmer failing unless he changes tack on Brexit.
As I posted the other day, Starmer’s Brexit policy is now to the right of every Tory PM from MacMillan to May over more than half a century. That fact is helping to endorse Brexit and give legitimacy to the central plank of Farage’s Reform UK in the minds of many gullible voters. It's a gift to Farage and really doesn’t help.
If Farage is to be stopped I think it’s essential to make the case AGAINST Brexit otherwise it is simply pushing the Overton window, defining what is politically possible, further and further to the right. Labour are never going to outflank Farage in that direction. Edging towards his position isn’t going to prompt Farage or Badenoch to adopt more moderate policies, it's encouraging them to become even more extreme.
For erstwhile Tory voters worried (however unreasonably) about immigration, if it came down to a choice between Farage and Starmer to get tough on ‘illegal migrants’ they will opt for Reform UK every time. And if Farage is doing well in the polls in three year’s time, looking as if he might be able to form a potential government, I can see a lot of working class areas voting for him.
The speech was said to have been hurriedly put together after a poll by More In Common (MIC) put Labour on 23% and in third place behind Reform UK (24%) and the Tories (26%). The figures aren't yet on MIC's website and they may overstate Reform's support. MIC was set up after the murder of Jo Cox and seems a more left-leaning organisation but I may be wrong.
The Times suggests Reform is starting to look plausible. Janice Turner writes:
"In July it looked as though Britain had dodged the populist wave sweeping Europe, and in November we became such a centrist sanctuary against Trumpism that Democrats such as Ellen DeGeneres have moved to the Cotswolds. Yet maybe we haven’t swerved it at all. Maybe Starmer is our Biden and we’re just one election behind."
What is obvious is that Reform UK is starting to attract what I used to consider moderate Tories like Tim Montgomerie, a co-founder of Conservative Home. He has now defected to Reform UK. Montgomerie says the gap between what the Tories promised and what it delivered has “pushed him over the edge”.
It is perhaps not really a surprise. In June he was talking about a 'unite the right' movement and he's now very well placed to do that. Badenoch is politically closer to Reform than any previous Tory leader making some kind of electoral pact a real possibility. Andrea Jenkyns, the former MP for Morley and Outwood has also joined Farage's mob. These defections are indeed starting to make Reform look like a normal political party.
But going back to Brexit, insisting that it won’t be reversed is nothing less than a ringing endorsement of your opponent's flagship policy, a policy that is hampering economic growth, the Labour movement is wholly opposed to and which Starmer campaigned against in 2016 and in 2018-19. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
Labour is happy to renationalise the Railway companies and reverse Margaret Thatcher’s agenda but seems strangely timid on doing the same to the water and power industries and overturning Brexit although they are all popular with voters.
It may have made sense during the election campaign but there is a time to start rocking the boat and begin relitigating Brexit and that time is now. At least he could begin to challenge the assumptions made in 2016 that we would all be better off by leaving the EU but his Pinewood speech on Thursday doesn’t mention Brexit once.
Labour needs to begin moving in the opposite direction on Europe - and fast. Starmer should put Farage on the back foot, get him to expend time and effort in defending Brexit rather than attacking Labour. That would be a good start
