Good morning, and I hope you’re basking in/surviving/managing to tune out the royal jubilation. Today’s newsletter is about another mysterious but inescapable feature of the British establishment: Keir Starmer’s theory of politics.
In a week where Boris Johnson has fought a rearguard action against the members of his own party who would like to see him ejected, the most memorable stories about the Labour leader were not about his plans to capitalise, but about his attempts to define himself in the public imagination. There was a comment piece in the Daily Telegraph (£) in fulsome praise of the Queen. And we had the news of a forthcoming book (£), billed as a statement of his plans, but also a “fierce argument for the vital role of respect and integrity in political life”.
Some on the left despair at what they see as a determination to draw defining lines on character rather than policy – something that could backfire horribly if the questionnaires sent out by police on Tuesday over “beergate” lead to a fixed penalty notice.
With all of that in mind, today’s newsletter brings you one perspective on a massive question: what does Starmer actually believe in, and what kind of country does he want to build? It’s a bit different from our usual approach: a Q&A with Oliver Eagleton, the author of a new biography, The Starmer Project, which looks for clues to the Labour leader’s future by excavating his past.
Let us know what you think by hitting reply – and here are the headlines. Have a great weekend.
Five big stories
Health | Doctors’ routine dismissal of women’s debilitating health problems as “benign” has contributed to gynaecology waiting lists soaring by 60% to more than half a million patients, a senior health leader has said.
Platinum jubilee | Four days of festivities to mark the Queen’s 70-year reign started with trooping the colour in London. The Queen will miss a thanksgiving service on Friday after experiencing “some discomfort” during Thursday’s celebrations.
Ukraine | About 800 people, including children, are hiding beneath a chemical factory in the key eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk, now 80% held by Russian troops, as more western allies promise additional missile systems and arms to Kyiv.
Gun violence | Joe Biden has urged a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines after a series of mass shootings, demanding: “How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” In a primetime White House address, Biden called on Congress to strengthen background checks.
Politics | Rebel Conservative MPs’ plans to oust Boris Johnson next week have descended into disunity, with at least one urging others to withdraw letters of no confidence for fear of triggering a vote before possible new leaders are ready.
In depth: ‘A conscious attempt to shed Corbynism’
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Starmer’s early life
It feels like your book’s been widely drawn on since its publication while Keir Starmer’s been so much in the news over “beergate”. And as well as the book’s own merits, I wonder if that speaks to the vacuum there’s been in terms of what we really know about his politics?
Oliver Eagleton: I think that’s absolutely true. During the leadership campaign, Starmer presented himself as a human rights lawyer turned politician with this record of fighting on the side of the underdog against the powerful. And then that was replaced by a sense that he was an empty vessel more than anything else. So I wanted to describe what his political formation was, and describe how even if he sometimes creates the impression of vacancy, that impression has real ideological foundations somewhere.
You talk in the book about how – whether he’s talking to Blairites or “red wall” voters – a lot of his actions are interpreted as “overtures to others”. Do you see that as a strategic approach on his part?
It is to an extent – adopting a certain humility as a politician and not thinking you have all the answers, and instead listening to the public, putting yourself in this passive position where you can most faithfully reflect what they’re telling you, rather than forever preaching to them, which is what the Starmer leadership would see as part of the problem with Corbyn.
The book takes us through his early political life and the route he takes to becoming director of public prosecutions. How would you describe that journey?
Starmer is from a staunch Labour family. He helped to set up the East Surrey Young Socialists, and campaigns for Jim Callaghan, and so on. In his early career as a lawyer, he is part of the London Labour left – he moves in circles that have links to the Communist party, and at one point works on a number of cases with lots of very radical lawyers, but then he also has another foot in a liberal NGO world. That speaks to the spirit of the time: on the one hand, there’s a resistance to Thatcherism that creates links between the far left and the more institutional Labour left, but then also you have the seeds of Blairism. You can see him shifting from one side of that world to the other, and the boundary is quite porous. It’s a subtle shift, but one that then conditions him to be able to enter the Crown Prosecution Service, bringing this liberal modernising ethos. He has the same administrative approach that Blairism comes out of – about accepting the institutions as they are and modernising them.
You talk about this idea that some of his goals become “good causes” rather than fundamental demands – seen as nice adornments to an effective managerial view of the state rather than a sense of how it ought to shift in a deeper sense.
Definitely. At the CPS, Starmer is remembered for this focus on standards and best practices. That speaks to an attitude to the state that’s about trying to get it to live up to standards that you can internally devise and use to guide it. You can see a lot of his legal campaigning as an iteration on that – on the death penalty in former British colonies, he says it should only be for the most egregious cases where there are the least extenuating circumstances [rather than seeking to abolish it]. It’s devising standards to prevent abuses of power, rather than having a different attitude to power that’s a bit more questioning, or more systemic.
I think it was implicit that “forensic” opposition, as Starmer’s approach is often described, was always an antonym to ideological opposition, and a conscious attempt to shed that link to Corbynism.
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His life in politics
What comes through most emphatically in the section of the book that deals with his time in the shadow cabinet is how many times he seems to have pushed Corbyn into positions on Brexit that he might not have taken otherwise. Is there an example of that which really sticks with you?
After 2017, Corbyn’s team wanted to adopt this reform Brexit approach, which – just as they were able to do in the 2017 election – could hopefully break through the leave-remain binary, and instead replace it with a Tory-Labour binary: there’s going to be a Tory Brexit, or there’s going to be a Labour Brexit. And Starmer was implacably opposed to that.
He threatened to resign in a meeting where he inaccurately claimed that the proposals were sprung on him without being consulted. And then in subsequent media appearances, he presents it very strongly as a kind of “Brexit in name only” policy before it’s been announced by Corbyn. That had the effect of recoding the policy and how it was then publicly interpreted. And from that point on, you start to see the leave-remain schism really kind of calcifying. That’s a crucial moment.
One read on that is that he simply displayed himself as being more effective than Corbyn and his allies at that kind of skulduggery or manoeuvring, which I suppose is a prerequisite for effective political leadership.
Yeah, that is interesting – there is a tension in the book between how he seems to run circles around Corbyn and his team during the Brexit years, but then seems quite hapless as a leader afterwards. There is a difference between using the internal party mechanisms to get his way – all of that seems to me like Starmer understanding how an institution works and working within it. Being then at the head of that same institution, and facing Johnson each week, is quite a different skill set.
Even without understanding his history as you’ve come to understand it, I don’t suppose many people honestly anticipated he was going to be the heir to Corbyn that he claimed in his campaign.
Well, I think there was an overestimation of how transformative Corbyn was on the consciousness of people like Starmer. There was a naive tendency to believe that you could keep Corbynism and weld it to a suit and a haircut and have a perfect electoral formula. That was a vast overstatement of what Corbynism’s staying power was going to be.
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Election ready?
Do you think there’s reason to be hopeful that Starmer will prosecute what his left-wing critics would want – a more coherent, noisier, appealing set of arguments in the run up to the next election?
I’m not so sure they have a slate of policies to roll out that they think would be more resonant.
That does mean that his success depends very much on the vagaries of the news cycle, and if one lands when it’s favourable to him then great, and if not then he’s in trouble. The fact that the rightwing press was able to bump up the “beergate” story to the top of the headlines, shows that Starmer might think passively waiting for a consensus to emerge, that his “Mr Rules” act is the perfect antidote to Johnson, will be effective. But actually, there are others who realise that you can influence public perceptions, and the right is ready to take an active role in that.
It’s really striking that there have been at least two reviews which praise your book but say don’t worry, this is good for Starmer – the implicit argument being that he’s disliked by the right people. What have you made of that?
I wasn’t expecting it. I can see the case now that because bizarrely Johnson’s line is that Starmer is a Corbynista in a suit, that chimes perfectly with the aggressive declarations from Blair and his successors that anything bad that happens is just the legacy of Corbynism. So I can understand why that’s a convenient view to take. From that perspective I’ve done him a massive favour, of setting out the distinctions between him and Corbyn, so I completely accept the criticism. But I’m really not sure that people even who were very hostile to Corbyn will be very reassured after reading the book that Starmer is the kind of politician they want.
• The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right by Oliver Eagleton is published by Verso (£12.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com.
What else we’ve been reading
Larry Elliot has examined the unintended consequences of sanctions against Russia. He persuasively argues that as the war in Ukraine shows no signs of abating, a humanitarian catastrophe will ensue in many parts of the world as a result of the spiralling cost of basic necessities. Nimo
Some Johnny Depp fans celebrated his legal victory over Amber Heard in Pirates of the Caribbean costumes. Jill Filipovic sees the defamation case differently: as a lesson that “one can be as careful as possible in speaking out about abuse and still be financially gouged into silence”. Archie
Human rights lawyer Michael Vilder has spent the last 30 years fighting for the little guy in Hong Kong. Amid increasingly violent crackdowns of human rights, Almond Li talks to Vilder about why he has finally decided to leave the city he has called home for so long. Nimo
Eleven eggs, a litre of whipped cream, and swiss roll: I like the sound of the platinum jubilee trifle. But having read about Tim Dowling’s adventures in trying to make it, I think I’ll stick to a union jack cupcake, thanks. Archie
Cycling is a relatively easy, affordable and green way to get about – especially in a city. Zoe Berry writes in the Atlantic about the complicated and contradictory history of this machine. Nimo
Sport
Cricket | England made a brilliant start to the Ben Stokes era by bowling New Zealand out for 132 on the first day of the first test at Lord’s – only to succumb to a familiar batting collapse and finishing the day 116-7.
Tennis | Iga Swiatek and Coco Gauff will meet in the final of the French Open after winning their semi finals yesterday. Swiatek beat Daria Kasatkina 6-2, 6-1 while Gauff triumphed over Martina Trevisan 6-3, 6-1.
Football | Two referees have come out as gay in an attempt to change the culture of Scottish football. One of the referees, Lloyd Wilson, said he had done so because “this has been a horrific journey … 17 years of living a life that I didn’t want to live.”
The front pages
The Guardian’s front page runs a picture of the royals across all columns as platinum jubilee festivities begin, but there’s room also for “Alarm at NHS failings over women’s health” as well as coverage marking 100 days of war in Ukraine. The Express has “Incredible” – the Queen’s remark to a teary Prince Charles at the sight of the “rapturous crowds” celebrating her jubilee. The Mirror has “Wow … What a racket Great-granny”, showing Prince Louis covering his ears next to Her Majesty during the flypast. “A glorious day, even for the prince of wails” says the Telegraph under a photo from the same sequence. The Times says “Beaming Queen gets her party started”. The i has “History maker” and the Financial Times uses a pic of the royals watching the flypast though its lead is “Opec lifts output to cool oil price rally”. The Yorkshire Post reports on “Nation’s day of Jubilee delight” while the Record says “Lovely Jubilee” – its main story is “Summer of chaos” at airports.
Something for the weekend
Our critics’ roundup of the best things to watch, read and listen to right now
TV
Borgen (Netflix)
“If, like me, you yearn for democratic politics to be carried out with machiavellian sophistication and attention to principle and policy detail you will agree that it is lovely to have Borgen back. Like a 2022 version of The West Wing, it is a fictional antidote to unbearable reality.” – Stuart Jeffries
Music
Reynaldo Hahn – Poèmes & Valses
“Stick most classical musicians in front of a studio microphone and they will try to replicate a perfect performance under perfect concert-hall conditions. But what if they were to conceive an interpretation instead, shaping it for private rather than communal listening? Pavel Kolesnikov took this approach, winningly, with Bach’s venerable Goldberg Variations in 2020, and now applies it in his championing of the piano music of Reynaldo Hahn.” – Erica Jeal
Film
Pickpocket
“Robert Bresson’s hypnotically intense and lucid movie-novella from 1959 is now revived as part of a director’s retrospective at London’s BFI Southbank, and whatever creakiness I thought I saw in this masterly film for its last UK rerelease has vanished. The andante pace of Pickpocket is part of its brilliance, part of its seriousness and its status as a cinema of ideas: a movie with something of Dostoevsky or Camus, or even Victor Hugo.” – Peter Bradshaw
Podcast
Origin Story
“What does it mean to be woke? Or a centrist? This intensely researched, discursive podcast from Dorian Lynskey and political columnist Ian Dunt takes a deep dive into the origins of ideas to try to restore something that’s too often missing from their usage: context.” – Alexi Duggins
Today in Focus
How to feed the world without destroying it
Amid a growing global food crisis and the degradation of our soils, can the solution be found in the lab? George Monbiot tells Michael Safi how we need to start appreciating the wonders of the soil beneath our feet.
Cartoon of the day | Steve Bell
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Schools in lower income areas that are predominately populated by people of colour across the United States have often had to contend with grey playgrounds that offer children little joy. To deal with this, a programme has been launched that has transformed hundreds of playgrounds, turning them into places with greenery, gazebos and basketball courts – not only making these playground more aesthetically pleasing but also creating a place where children will actually want to play.
“A lot of these kids live in apartment buildings,” says Mary Alice Lee, the director of the New York City branch of Trust for Public Land. “This might be one of the first times or the first time that they planted anything and got to be one on one with nature.”
Sign up here for a weekly roundup of The Upside, sent to you every Sunday
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s crosswords to keep you entertained throughout the day – with plenty more on the Guardian’s Puzzles app for iOS and Android. See you on Monday.
