How ambitious are you? That’s a favoured question of the economist Tyler Cowen, co-author of a recent book on talent, who likes to ask it in job interviews. I suppose because both the answer and the way people come to their answer are revealing. Go on, try it on yourself.
If there’s one takeaway from Keir Starmer’s speech at Labour Party Conference, it is that he is ambitious for Britain. Yuck, that sounds like an endorsement. It isn’t. But hear me out.
Starmer doesn’t just want to boost GDP, but make Britain the fastest-growing economy in the G7. He doesn’t just want to build new houses, but entire new towns. He doesn’t just want to match Tony Blair’s investment in public services, Harold Wilson’s attempts to modernise industry and Clement Attlee’s task of rebuilding a nation from the ashes of war, he wants to do all three.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that a man who comes from humble beginnings (you may have heard, he is the son of a toolmaker), rose to become director of public prosecutions and then leader of the opposition is himself highly ambitious.
It is in sharp contrast to Rishi Sunak, and not just in the origin story. Last week’s Conservative Party Conference was more a laundry list of items the British state was no longer capable of achieving. Meanwhile, those HS2 replacement transport schemes? It turns out the projects cited were ‘indicative’ rather than guaranteed to be funded.
In attempting to address the ‘why Labour?’ question, Starmer has his answer: because he wants to be one of the great reforming prime ministers. As political editor Nicholas Cecil reports, missing was any new or eye-watering policies. The guy is trying to win an election after all, not an episode of Pointless. Instead, he talks of a “decade of national renewal” i.e. at least two parliaments. Punchy stuff from a party with 197 seats in the Commons and who last time out was suggesting the electorate make Jeremy Corbyn prime minister.
Yet such ambition doesn’t seem ridiculous. Nothing makes you look more like a winner than winning itself. Not just in the polls but in by-elections, as last week’s victory in Rutherglen demonstrated.
There ought to be plenty of scepticism around. For one thing, there is precious little money around. 10-year gilt yields are north of 4.5 per cent. The post-Cold War peace dividend feels like a distant aberration. Inflation remains high, Brexit a drag. Just because Starmer says he’ll achieve something, doesn’t make it so.
But the leader of the opposition can only do so much. In Starmer’s case, he took the reins of a party whose parliamentary representation, morale and moral currency were at or near rock bottom. He transformed it, dumped a bunch of policy and, thanks to the Tories’ self-immolation, is on the precipice of power.
None of this guarantees sunlit uplands. But you don’t get the chance to fail in government unless you first succeed at opposition.
In the comment pages, Matthew d’Ancona thinks a floundering Britain needs a radical prime minister – can that be Starmer? While George Chesterton says London stands for everything Hamas hates – so think before you excuse terror in Israel.
And finally, to me you are perfect... to rent. A Notting Hill house on the street where a pivotal scene from Love Actually was filmed has become available for a mere £2,750 a week.
