It really isn’t 1997, is it? Back then, a confident new Labour prime minister promised that “things can only get better”. In sharp contrast, Sir Keir Starmer warns today, in his first keynote speech as PM, that “things will get worse before we get better”. Note the ominous “we”.
His political logic is not hard to decode. The Prime Minister and Rachel Reeves have a window of opportunity, in the aftermath of Labour’s landslide victory on July 4 but before the remnants of the Conservative Party elect their new leader on November 2, in which to get as much of the bad news into the public domain as they possibly can.
Last month, the new Chancellor announced — with some justification, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility — that the Tories had left her with unfunded commitments adding up to £22 billion.
Signalling tax rises and spending cuts ahead, she demanded departmental savings of £5.5 billion this year and scrapped winter fuel payments for around 10 million pensioners: a measure that is already causing her political difficulty. Today, Starmer goes much further, identifying “a societal black hole” and committing his government to “unpopular decisions now if it’s the right thing for the country”. Correctly, he distances himself from the infantile populism of the post-Brexit years: “When there is rot deep in the heart of a structure, you can’t just cover it up. You can’t tinker with it or rely on quick fixes.”
The astonishing speed with which Kamala Harris has reframed the US election should be a lesson to Labour
Every new government blames whatever predicament it faces on the last lot. For years after 2010, the Tories made gloating reference to Liam Byrne’s note to his successor as Chief Secretary to the Treasury: “I’m afraid there is no money.” Up to a point, it is only natural for Starmer to frame his mission as a colossal repair job.
But only up to a point; blaming the Tories for everything will deliver diminishing returns, not least because they are such a pathetically reduced force. More importantly, the public has had it up to here with excuses, warm words and postponements. It wants to see some gain in return for all the pain.
If you campaign for office, as Starmer did, with a single word as your slogan — “Change” — you raise public expectations accordingly. When you compare your ambitions to those of Clement Attlee, Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher — as he has done — you must be ready to be held to those standards.
During the riots earlier in the summer, the PM performed impressively, not giving an inch to those who were urging him to acknowledge the supposedly “legitimate grievances” of racist thugs. For many new prime ministers, this would have been a daunting test; but Starmer was in his element as the nation’s prosecutor-in-chief.
In sharp contrast, he has yet to present a broad narrative of revival and radical centrism that will make sense of the hardship he forecasts. Fiscal conservatism may reassure the markets but it does not quicken the popular pulse. And there is a risk that his own party will become the scene of bitter recrimination between now and the budget in October over — for instance — the two-child benefit cap, the winter fuel allowance restrictions and the deeper cuts that clearly lie ahead. Labour’s first conference in power since 2009 will be a curious brew of celebration and angst. It is legitimate to say that there are tough times ahead. It is honest, which is to the PM’s credit. But it is also woefully insufficient.
Having been rewarded with a working majority of 167, he will not be taken seriously if he offers no more than grey, gradualist technocracy. It was he who promised “a decade of renewal”. It was he who so expertly fought for the top job. The voters are entitled to say: Well?
Starmer should bear in mind what happened to the last relentlessly dour Labour prime minister. He might also reflect that it doesn’t have to be this way. In Chicago last week, at the Democratic National Convention, we witnessed a very different style of progressivism.
True, he will never match Kamala Harris’s panache and sense of political theatre. Obama rhymes with Starmer, but there the symmetries end.
Yet Harris’s slogan— “We’re not going back” — is a challenge to progressive parties all over the world seeking to put the populist-nationalist era behind them. The astonishing speed with which she has reframed the presidential contest should be a lesson to the Democrats’ sister party across the Atlantic. A little hope wouldn’t hurt.
