By Lennon Airey (Political Editor)
If you’re on the left of British politics, Leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer is political marmite; deeply criticised by Momentum and the Labour left as a continuation of Conservatism and somebody with no core political principles yet hailed by moderates as being a forensic, radical ‘change’ candidate, longing to secure a Labour majority to fundamentally transform a broken Britain. This article seeks to take a deeper look into the man who is increasingly likely to be Britain’s next Prime Minister, with the intention to answer the underlying question at the heart of the political climate, what type of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer will be but will ultimately conclude at the idea that Keir Starmer is a dull Leader of the Opposition, essential to carry the Ming vase across the ice rink but, with time, could be a radical Prime Minister.
Essentially, Kier Starmer’s backstory is one of smashing glass ceilings, the first in his family to attend university, qualifying as a barrister and then at the climax of this legal journey, leading the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), instigating radical reforms to how prosecutions operate in Britain, namely having a focus on the victims of sexual assault. Added to this, are the media-rehearsed lines about his father, a tool maker, and his chronically ill mother, a nurse, which grounded Starmer into working class culture from an early age. However, this is only relevant if it translates into a tangible political vision, with the more radical on the left arguing that the Labour manifesto offers very little to improve the lives of those in desperate poverty, including the maintenance of the 2 child benefit cap which keeps hundreds of thousands of children in poverty in order to cut back on welfare spending. Additionally, the manifesto only mentions ‘child poverty’ twice in a manifesto of over 25,000 words, a far cry of what many believe is the radical change needed to change the lives of those in poverty. However, there is a convincing argument that politics has become too leader centric due to the rise of populism and polarisation, with Starmer’s deputy Angela Rayner arguably posing as the best representation of what a Starmer-led government could do for those with the least; a part of Labour’s soft-left who has been vocal in her aims to lift people out of poverty and improve the lives of working people with her New Deal For Working People, including the ending of fire and rehire and producing a real living wage for ordinary families. It also seems that, in Starmer’s drive to eradicate the rise of ‘sticking plaster politics’, he would consider improving the lives of working people to be a much longer-term strategy, transcending the orthodoxy of government handouts and raising living standards by delivering economic prosperity and a cultural shift towards a country framed around social justice and its synthesis with social mobility, reinforced by Starmer’s vision to teach oracy to close the class discrepancy in speech. Therefore, while Starmer’s background of hardship and a relentless pursuit of success isn’t exactly reflected in his current manifesto, rendering him a rather dull political figure, his ‘decade of national renewal’, he could harness all of the essential organs of the state to create a triangulation of economic prosperity with a cultural shift towards building a better Britain framed around social justice.
Secondly, it is vital to examine the extent to which Starmer’s manifesto really addresses the root causes of the challenges facing Britain. While it may be true that the manifesto promises 6,500 more teachers for specialist subjects and free breakfast clubs for all primary school children under his central mission of ‘smashing the class ceiling’, Starmer and his prospective Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson are saying very little about the root causes of what drives not only the educational challenges in the first place, but also the reasons a Labour government would have to bring in free breakfast clubs. Let's take schools, according to Stop School Cuts, 70% of schools now have less funding available to them than they did in 2010, with the consequence of austerity hitting the poorest children the most. For a social democratic government entering Number 10, a reasonable solution to this could be to levy a wealth tax on the super-rich to harness investment into schools (the Green Party have proposed a levy of 1% of all wealth over £10 million as a part of £170 billion they could raise from taxation and borrowing to spend on public services) yet it seems that the initial steps for a Labour government is only the ending of VAT on private schools to raise around £1.5 billion for state schools, attracting criticism from not only Momentum, but also the IFS for not having tangible fiscal policy regarding the public sector. Additionally, when looking at the root cause of the challenges facing the broader public sector, with this also involving the NHS and the His Majesty’s Prison System, the challenges go far beyond the Labour proposals; while Labour wish to build more prisons and issue 40,000 extra NHS appointments per week to clear the backlog, there seems to be no longer term thinking when it comes to the prosperity of our state institutions. Once again, it is convincing to argue that Starmer has boxed himself into being the fiscally prudent centrist who simply cannot offer a progressive taxation system to really address the challenges of these services; a radical government would introduce a National Social Care Service to ensure we had free beds in the backdoor of our NHS and would have a radical approach to prevention including increased use of sugar taxes and government schemes to improve mental and physical wellbeing, like the Danish Health Authority who restructured their health service to create Health Promotion Packages at a more devolved level in 2012-2013. Additionally, in prisons, a more radical approach wouldn't be to build more prisons to lock more people up, adding to the monotony of the frankly outdated approach we have to crime, but would be to integrate prisons into the community and lock less people up, giving the existing prisons a rehabilitative function, such as in Sweden, but would also mean that the community-focused approach would lead to less cultural alienation and, subsequently a lower reoffending rate, again proved by Sweden’s 16% reoffending rate compared to Britain’s 25%. This proves my point further, Labour don’t appear to be offering the longer-term radical solutions; perhaps if they actually utilised the political swear word of ‘tax’ in a more positive light akin to functioning public services, they would have the room to do this yet, due to the challenging political climate Starmer is operating in and his seeming hesitance to project radical policies, the latest manifesto doesn’t project confidence and hope for a reformed public sector fit for the future. However, that is not to say that, in 5 years' time that, once the economy and the frameworks have been repaired by an uninspiring but practical Labour government, willing to do the hard yards that lay the foundations for national prosperity such as in harnessing economic growth and reforming the planning system to build 1.5 million homes, we couldn’t see radical reform under Starmer’s banner of a ‘decade of national renewal’ with there being some flashlights of longer term prosperity such as GB Energy and a National Wealth Fund. However, this seems to be secondary to the Starmerite notion of fiscal credibility paired with pragmatism, not dogmatism, reducing the immediate vision of the Labour Party as being relatively toothless.
The surge in the polls of Reform UK should concern us all, especially when paired with a devastating results for the centre ground in the latest European elections. One does get the sense that politics is changing, with Britain most certainly not being exempt from this trend. With the latest Redfield and Wilton opinion poll putting Reform on 19%, the far-right are moving and moving quickly and it will be Keir Starmer’s job to stop this, he cannot cave into this trend and must act as a beacon of progressive politics and, if unable, he must be replaced by somebody who can. However, Labour proposes a paradoxical approach to dealing with the far-right surge. Of course, the best approach to dealing with populism is being pragmatic in delivery, delivering tangible results on the ground for those attracted to the extremes. Part of the surge in far-right support is a general apathy with Westminster which is not seen to be working in the interests of the people it is supposed to represent. On the one hand, Labour’s policies around the constitution reflect a more modern, forward-thinking Westminster, including the establishment of a Modernisation Committee and an independent Ethics and Integrity Commission, crucially driving up standards. Moreover, it is encouraging to see Labour look to decentralise politics even further to try and curb some of the apathy towards the Westminster Model, such as in establishing a Council of the Nations to bring together the regional mayors and leaders of the distinct nations of the United Kingdom, adding a modern feeling to the structure of a Labour government, pleasing not only those apathetic from Westminster, but also the esteemed Report of the Commission of the UK’s Future, potentially bringing people together under a new model of politics. Although this would insinuate Starmer could be a radical, dynamic Prime Minister who changes the nature of politics, he has his flaws in attempting to combat the far-right, with this sub argument being framed around Europe and immigration. On both of these issues, Starmer seems to be pulling back his instincts as a historically pro-Europe human rights lawyer with Labour’s rhetoric seemingly being used to pander to right wing sentiments, particularly on the preservation of Brexit. Despite Brexit having taken 4% off our GDP since 2020 and having caused challenges in supply chains, Keir Starmer has refused to even rejoin the single market or the customs union, damaging the credibility of Rachel Reeve’s plan to have the fastest economic growth in the G7, having been seen by many as an attempt to win the confidence of the Red Wall voters who voted overwhelmingly to leave the EU and who switched to the Tory party in 2019, demonstrating Starmer’s unwillingness to challenge the absurdity of Brexit even despite its economic consequences. Arguably, a more sensible approach would be to challenge this right-wing utopia and, for the benefit of the economy, rejoin the single market and customs union over a 5 year parliament as a part of a broader integration with our European neighbours, bringing people together as they see the tangible benefits of closer ties. Symbiotic to the issue of Brexit is immigration. While Starmer has undoubtedly placed one of his finest political operators, Yvette Cooper, into the brief of Shadow Home Secretary, the pair seem to have thus far been unable to rewrite the debate on immigration, instead pandering to the right to argue strongly for a ‘significant reduction’ in the number of migrants every year. While not outright demonising migrants like the Conservative Party, the rhetoric of the Labour front bench appeases the trope of right-wing populism of the ‘population crisis’ with the strain on public services being the result of immigration. While not putting aside the immense challenges of the broken asylum system that Labour will inherit, Starmer should challenge the right on immigration; the UK undoubtedly does have a population crisis, as per the Office for National Statistics, however this is not caused by immigrants. Instead, we have an aging population paired with an extremely low birth rate which rings alarms for the future of our economy; while the older generations leave the workforce, there will be a subsequent short fall of workers to fill their place, with migration here being possibly the only viable option to fill our working crisis in the future. A political reality that Labour is going to have to grip is that the only way to be credible on a long-term workforce strategy is to involve mass migration in the future due to the falling birth rate and the failure of our education system to harness the skills training needed. Therefore, while carrying his Ming vase, Starmer appears to have boxed himself into a narrow political spectrum in which, in his desperate desire to win over disparate Tories, he cannot zoom out and create the viable, compassionate and, frankly, common sense policies we need to not only combat the far-right both at home and abroad but also to deliver a brighter future. Therefore, it is of political necessity for Starmer to be a more radical Prime Minister than he is originally setting out as, due to the speed of the rise of the right, his job could be threatened if he does not take the right on.
Therefore, while Sir Keir Starmer appears to be an up-tight Leader of the Opposition, terrified of dropping the Ming vase across the ice rink in a bid to become Prime Minister, it is convincing to argue that, perhaps due to political necessity and also out of the need to genuinely transform Britain into a nation of prosperity once again, Keir Starmer will have to be a more radical Prime Minister than he is currently letting on. There is a thin line between competent and boring, with Keir Starmer fitting the description of both to many. While Britain needs a boring personality paired alongside a competent government to restore trust to politics, this ultimately must be paired with radical policies to fundamentally transform this country and, most importantly, to hold the strong argument for progressive social democracy for decades to come against the surge of far-right populism, a vital role that Keir Starmer must fulfill.
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