Two years into Starmer’s leadership we can see that he is not the leader we voted for
We’ve had over two years of Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party and what do we have to show for it? Not much of what was promised when he stood for leader. And a lot of stuff that wasn’t promised. That’s what.
Starmer’s pledges to Labour members are not what we have now. There was nothing about throwing out party members for meeting with proscribed organizations before they were proscribed. Nothing about not supporting striking workers during a cost-of-living crisis. Nothing about working with Peter Mandelson.
I’ve been had
I’m sorry to say that I chose Starmer as my second preference candidate. I did this largely because of his 10 pledges that contain reasonable centre-left Labour priorities, from social justice to tackling the looming environmental disaster. I must admit that I have been had. Starmer won’t nationalise industries in line with his pledge, which I foolishly believed he would stick to.
When the leader of the opposition won’t criticise the government’s repugnant scheme of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda on the grounds that it’s a violation of their human rights and it’s completely immoral to do this to vulnerable people, you have to ask yourself: what is the point in this leader of the opposition? Remember, Starmer stood to be leader of the opposition on his record as a human rights lawyer.
False premises
I feel like a trick has been played on me. I thought I was getting the moderate left, not a Labour Party determined to chase the votes of angry boomers in former Red Wall seats and sees no popular prejudice it’s not willing to pander to. We have a Labour Party that wants to win over the public, but so long as the public doesn’t include striking workers or left-wing activists.
Starmer became Labour leader under false premises. He has gone back on so much of what he promised that I feel confident saying this is a different leadership from the one that was voted for. What we have is like ordering a gourmet beef burger in your local gastro pub and then being served a deep-fried turd covered in puke. Then, when you complain, you’re told: “that’s politics” and “you didn’t take the commitments made in the menu seriously, did you? Don’t be so naive.”
More competent management
Will any of this make a difference? Well, you can already hear rumbles in the Starmer-sympathetic press that he needs to stand for something to win. The fact that Labour is outpolling the Tories is largely because Johnson self-destructed and this leadership race is making them all look awful, not because of anything Starmer has done.
William Hague said: that Labour wins when it owns the future, so, what is Starmer’s vision for the future if it’s not going to be those 10 promises? Is it that a man with a sensible haircut who isn’t massively incompetent will be in charge? Don’t get me wrong, the Tories corruption is utterly shameless, and needs to stop. I’m sure Starmer will be less of a train wreck than the Tories, but that’s hardly a future to get excited about. A more competent management of the slow decline of human civilisation into the inferno of climate change isn’t an appealing vision of the future.
I have written before about how Labour needs ideas to tackle the huge issues facing British society, from the cost-of-living crisis to the looming environmental disaster, and they need a narrative beyond basic competence if they’re going to inspire enough people to win an election.
Untrustworthy
Can we trust someone who went back on the commitments they made to be Labour leader? The most recent of which is Labour announcing that they will not renationalise the railways, energy and water companies, despite this being one of Starmer’s pledges. What commitments will he make to become Prime Minister, and will he fulfil them?
Starmer shouldn’t be leader if he can’t be held to what he said. He also shouldn’t be leader if he cannot support striking workers. The clue is in the name: the Labour Party.
This does beg the question: who should take over? Andy Burnham is popular but he’s off being mayor of Manchester. Wes Streeting would jump at the chance to pander to as many socially conservative sympathies as possible as a way out of the culture war.
The left’s candidate
Who would the left’s candidate be? There’s no clear front runner. The Corbyn project appears to have died with Corbyn’s chances of becoming PM. Through a combination of a lack of planning and unwillingness of left Labour MPs to seize the crown, there is currently no successor to the Corbyn project.
When coupled with Starmer’s changes to the party’s rules for leadership elections, it looks increasingly unlikely that any left candidate would even make it on to the ballot paper.
So, we have an illegitimate and ineffective leader with no clear successor. Labour has a lack of talent, partly because most people don’t believe that politics can change anything and don’t bother entering the field. Couple that with the abuse you get, why bother?
Front bench failure
Starmer may be in office on false pretences, but I don’t see a way forward. Labour clearly has no interest in being a socialist party or representing the views of young or left-wing people. Unless these young people agree with everything some mythical Red Wall ex-Labour voter thinks about strikes, the EU and Corbyn.
I don’t see any of the other front bench MPs behaving differently if they were leader. Labour has become another party chasing the votes of reactionary, socially conservative, angry about young woke people, anti-strike boomers. Changing the leader won’t fix Labour. Maybe it’s time we looked elsewhere.
"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0
