In the Britain of September 1939, it became known as the phoney war. Hitler had invaded Poland. War had been declared. For months, though, there was little military action. At home, the country was placed on a war footing. But these were not yet the decisive times. Those would come later; they would last for years and would change the country for ever.
In the Britain of August 2024, we are living through something comparable in terms of the arc of Keir Starmer’s prime ministership. Labour has been elected. It is settling into government. It has a radically different project from its predecessors, the scale of which is widely underestimated. But these are not the decisive times either. For Britain, these might be dubbed a period of phoney government.
Things of moment have, of course, happened since 4 July. None are more indicative of the new government’s intended direction of travel than Rachel Reeves’ acceptance of the public sector pay awards this week and Angela Rayner’s housebuilding programme. Yet it is the novel fact of the Labour government’s existence that still matters most. Substantive governance has mostly been preliminary and sometimes performative so far. This is not yet the government that it will eventually become, or that, in four or five years’ time, it will be judged for being.
There is no surprise in this. Change takes time. It is four weeks since Rishi Sunak, not Starmer, was in Downing Street. It takes months to become familiar with the workings of power, even more to do stuff with consequences, let alone do stuff that the public actually notices and approves of. It is simply too early to pour either encomiums or scorn on the way that Labour is governing. We should not be too impatient.
All this was baked into Starmer’s plans long ago. The slow approach was signalled for months. Little in the past month was not on the early weeks’ grid devised by his chief of staff, Sue Gray, before the election. That is true, in particular, of the strategy of hammering the Tories over the scale of the task that Labour has inherited. Putting some issues out to internal review from day one – the public finances, the NHS, and defence among them – shows Starmer intends to extend the phoney government phase into at least the autumn.
Parliament’s return in September will not mark the end of the phoney government period. There will be only a short session before the autumn party conference break. MPs will be preoccupied with winning places on the new select committees. Labour whips will be focused on keeping a grip on that process. Ministers will be focused on the 30 October budget and the spending review. It will be November before the Tories have a new leader, who will need time to bed in.
So, even allowing for the unexpected, it could be months before the Starmer project begins to be shaped by the dialectic of events. But that moment will come. When it does, the narrative of the Labour years will need to be written in greater earnest, and in less doctrinaire ways than at present. When the real takes over from the phoney, probably in October and November, a cluster of already foreseeable pressure points will shape the story.
The government is open about some of these pressures – but not about others. Economic management is acknowledged, as Reeves tries to juggle the long term (hikes in public sector wages) with the here and now (spending cuts) as the economy slowly strengthens – this week’s interest rate cut a modest sign – and the budget approaches.
Health service instability and long waiting lists are widely accepted as another crunch. Winter pressures may provide an early test. Also clearly acknowledged is the strategic necessity on several levels of a British reset in relations with Europe, more urgent if Donald Trump is elected but certain to happen even if he loses.
Ministers seem less well prepared for other issues that may push the government off its course and check its popularity. Prime among these is rural and community resistance to planned changes in energy infrastructure and housing. Anxiety about the kind of lawless behaviour that has been seen on many urban streets after the Southport murders could also bring the Labour honeymoon to a sooner than expected end.
All of these have potential electoral consequences for Labour’s large new coalition of parliamentary seats. Rural objections to pylon installation, north-east Scottish anger at banning North Sea oil drilling, and commuter alarm at green belt building projects: all threaten Labour MPs now. It is possible that the decline in housing starts in London, and the downgrading of the capital’s housing targets could provide the city’s pitiful Tories with a housing issue around which to rally.
There may also be crunch issues in the way that Labour does politics. The party has suddenly become very powerful. It does not have to take backbench rebels, other parties or outside voices into account. It can appoint whoever it chooses to public posts. But party management will get harder once MPs feel themselves more at risk. And it only takes one dubious appointment for Labour’s claims to probity to start unravelling. So much, too, for hopes of electoral reform, after one of the least representative election results in our history.
None of this is to say that Labour will inevitably be impaled on the same kind of sleazy political rocks that wrecked the Tories. But those rocks have not gone away. Nor has the enduring truth that, in politics, the two things that matter most are the credibility of the party leader as a prime minister and the chancellor’s handling of the economy.
Since 4 July, Starmer has slotted seamlessly into the role of a competent prime minister. His challenge is to avoid any government taint of venality, nepotism or untrustworthiness. Reeves, meanwhile, has made herself the other dominant figure in government. Her challenge is different. In her Mais lecture to business and finance leaders in March, she talked up big things like industrial strategy, the role of the state, greening the economy and embedding economic growth in the security of its citizens. Her longer-term test is whether she can fulfil any of those aims in the face of immediate budgetary and spending pressures.
There can always be debate over whether a period of phoney war or phoney government is a precursor to something more decisive, or whether it is merely a sign of reflexive lack of will. Acting fast and ruthlessly can sometimes be the best course. In 1940, the phoney war came to an end with the fall of France. Chamberlain resigned and Churchill took over. Starmer is leading a country in very different times. Even so, when the real replaces the phoney, as it will soon do, his real test, by which he will deserve to be judged, will start.
Martin Kettle is a Guardian columnist
