There can’t be many people left in the country who haven’t heard of Rishi Sunak’s five promises. Or pledges. Or priorities. Or vague ideas. Whatever their current status happens to be. Like a guilty person returning to the scene of the crime, the more it looks inevitable the prime minister will fail on all five, the more frequently he feels obliged to mention them. He probably obsessively repeats them to himself in his sleep.
The same could not be said for Keir Starmer’s five missions. Even those who have heard them find it hard to remember what they are. Partly because the Labour leader doesn’t go on and on about them at every available opportunity. Wisely, he prefers to choose his moments. But mainly because much of what Starmer says is instantly forgettable.
Not because it’s dull or unimportant, but because Keir has the unfortunate capacity to wipe people’s memories. You try to remember, you even make notes, but within minutes of a speech ending, it’s as if you hadn’t been there. I’ve now watched all five mission statements and I’m struggling on the first four. Just hazy shards, disconnected fragments, that may or may not have actually happened.
And it’s clearly not just me. Ten minutes into Starmer’s speech on education – the fifth and last of his mission statements – two students standing behind him began their own public protest. Actually, scrub that. Protest is too strong a word. It was more a gentle disturbance. The sort of thing that would barely raise an eyebrow if it took place in a public library.
After unfurling a red banner that said “No more U-turns. Green New Deal”, there was a brief pause while the students waited for Starmer to notice. Eventually, one of them interrupted the speech. “Excuse me, Keir,” he said. He couldn’t have been more polite. He just wanted to know why a commitment to a greener future wasn’t on the Labour mission list.
Starmer was a model of politeness in return. Showing no sign of being irritated that his speech had been derailed on live TV, he began to have a one-to-one chat with the student. If he’d paid more attention to one of the previous missions – even Keir struggles to remember what order he delivered them in – he’d have seen there was a green mission. So all was well.
The student didn’t look entirely convinced. Just because Starmer said there had been a green mission statement, it didn’t mean there had been. After all, how could anyone verify something that had been deleted from public memory? So he kept at it. Just assuming there was a mission, he wanted the Labour leader’s word that he wouldn’t row back on it. That Labour was still committed to a £28bn green fund. Keir muttered something reassuringly vague.
Had this been a Sunak speech, the protest would have been over in a heartbeat. At the first sign of an interruption, the prime minister’s goons would have Tasered the students and had them on the ground. As a precursor to handing them over to Suella Braverman for retribution. Both would have been on the next flight to Rwanda.
But Labour does things in a more low-key, more British way. The students had said what they had come to say, Starmer had also had his say, but no one really knew how to end the interruption. So the three of them just stood where they were, not doing anything, not saying anything, for what felt an awkward age.
Eventually, a couple of people – presumably Mid-Kent College staff – stepped up to shepherd them away. The students couldn’t have looked more grateful. As if they were a bit embarrassed by their interruption. Starmer watched them leave. There was an understanding that we would never talk of this again. And we didn’t.
Starmer had begun his mission statement by saying this one was personal. The one that underpinned all others. An examination of how social class had increasingly come to determine a child’s destiny. And how Labour would attempt to reverse-engineer that. He had grown up in a pebbledashed semi. He was the son of a toolmaker. These two facts are mainstays of every Keir speech. They get wheeled out every time. There again, you can’t blame him. The Conservatives are still trying to persuade voters that his knighthood is hereditary rather than conferred for public service.
This felt more real than previous Starmer speeches. The closest we have got to understanding what he stands for and what makes him tick. Though this comes with an essential caveat. That it was still a Starmer speech. So it did have its moments when you were desperate for it to end. Public speaking is still an art that escapes him. But credit where credit’s due. He is making progress. At least with this one, the message was loud and clear. Whether it still will be tomorrow is another matter. He promised to be laser-focused on child poverty, even though child poverty didn’t officially qualify as a mission. Go figure.
What Starmer wanted was for working-class children not to be left behind. To leave school with the skills they need for life. Not just the three Rs, but also oracy. The ability to express yourself and make an argument in public. Let’s hope the next generation can manage rather better than many of the sitting MPs. Most can barely string a sentence together. Starting with Rish!. He also wanted more creativity in the curriculum. Katharine Birbalsingh, the Tories’ favourite headteacher, isn’t going to like that. Nor was it clear how Keir was going to pay for everything. He seemed to think the VAT raised on private school fees would cover everything.
While the Labour leader was on his last-chance power-drive mission – even the rightwing press appeared to be taking him seriously – Sunak was continuing to maintain his Trappist vow of silence. Weirdly, he had nothing to say on yet another Tory sex pest MP being found guilty by the standards committee. Not even that on the whole his MPs should try not to grope people. Rish! seems intensely relaxed on moral issues these days. Nor did he have any comment on the court judgment that found the government should not be allowed to withhold documents from the Covid inquiry. Losing is getting to be a habit for Sunak. Maybe he should incorporate it into his priorities. That way, he wouldn’t disappoint.
