Easter Sunday marks 12 months since Keir Starmer was elected Labour leader on 4 April 2020. DAVID CONNOLLY assesses his first-year performance and suggests a way forward for the left.
In Sir Keir Starmer’s own words, Labour faces a “monumental task” to win the next general election. It needs to gain 123 seats, most of which are in towns rather than cities, 78 behind the so-called ‘red wall’.
This requires an overall swing to Labour of 10.5 per cent, larger than in 1945 or 1997, plus a substantial comeback in Scotland. Without major gains north of the border, the swing required in England and Wales is 13.8 per cent – and the Tories have won a majority of English votes at every general election since 2005.
Even without considering constituency boundary changes and voter suppression, to get anywhere near this target Labour needs to attract, not just the those traditional supporters who switched to Conservative in December 2019, but Labour people who voted Liberal Democrat, a group often neglected by commentators.
In addition, we should not forget that the Tories are focused, not only on retaining their new ‘red wall’ seats, but on grabbing another swathe of Labour marginals in northern England, such as Ian Lavery’s in Wansbeck (Ashington/Morpeth) held by just 814 last time.
In this respect, the by-election now underway 45 miles down the coast in Hartlepool may tell us something about Labour’s prospects. The town is part of the Tees Valley area whose Tory mayor, Ben Houchen, was given a large pot of public money for post-industrial regeneration, including £40 million spent in December 2018 on bringing the slowly dying Teesside International airport into public ownership.
How this sits with his aim of making Teesside a world-leading centre in carbon capture is a moot point. But there is no doubt this intervention, and several other initiatives, are making a big impact on the public in an area that has long felt neglected and ‘left behind’. We should note, too, that several hundred Treasury jobs are being moved from London to Tory-held Darlington next year.
Unfortunately, the Labour campaign in Hartlepool has not got off to the best of starts with the candidate, Paul Williams, selected from a misnamed ‘longlist’ of one followed by revelations about his history on Facebook.
Labour’s majority of 3,595 was only possible in 2019 because the Conservative and Brexit parties cancelled each other out, and it will be an uphill struggle to win again. Labour’s task has been made even more difficult by the candidacy of Thelma Walker representing a new Northern Independence Party. She was a left-wing MP for Colne Valley from 2017-19 who resigned from the Labour Party last November.
In its own way, the changing politics of Tees Valley raises the difficult question of what Labour should do if the Tories are now doing what Labour has traditionally done?
Boris Johnson may be a hapless prime minister whose rejection of scientific advice on lockdowns and gung-ho attitude to the pandemic cost thousands of lives, but he is also a formidable political opponent and an erratic opportunist who has landed on Labour’s square.
Smash and grab
The recent budget is a case in point. As Joe Guinan put it in Tribune: “Higher corporate tax rates on the most profitable companies. A green industrial revolution. A new national infrastructure bank to channel capital to the regions. Investment-led growth to fuel the economy of the future. A change in the Bank of England’s mandate to incorporate environmental sustainability. Moving parts of HM Treasury to the north. Even government financial support for community ownership to preserve pubs and other local assets.
“And on and on. If you closed your eyes for a moment, it was almost possible to imagine it was John McDonnell and not Rishi Sunak delivering the Chancellor’s 2021 spring Budget statement.”
Indeed, it was a smash and grab raid on the Corbyn agenda carried out in broad daylight, and it caught the Labour leadership on the hop. It included an implied repudiation of George Osborne’s dramatic cut in corporation tax in 2010 as Sunak promised to raise it by 25 per cent, a measure shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds initially opposed.
Her position was eventually reversed but it was a distinctly uncomfortable stance to take. An editorial in the usually sympathetic New Statesman was damming: “As the Conservatives reposition themselves for a new era of state intervention, the Labour Party seems to have lost confidence in what it is, what it wants and for whom it speaks.”
While it’s true that classical Keynesian economics advises against tax increases in a recession, this misstep had little to do with economics. In their determined drive to put as much political distance between themselves and their predecessors the leadership instinctively identified any rise in corporation tax, even one supported by 61 per cent of Conservative voters, as too much like John McDonnell and so rejected it.
The same kind of reasoning is at work in their response to the ongoing Tory war on ‘woke’. The retreat began innocuously enough when Starmer felt obliged to support the singing of ‘Rule Britannia’ at the Last Night of the Proms. Labour then abstained on bills to extend the legal right of the state and its agents to use violence in one form or another.
They were also planning to abstain on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, a severe threat to the right to demonstrate, until events on Clapham Common following the murder of Sarah Everard made that politically impossible. And now, having used the union jack as a backdrop in interviews and speeches, they can hardly turn round and oppose government measures to ensure this flag of a cruel and sometimes genocidal imperialism flies on every government building.
Values offer
In an effort to neutralise what he no doubt sees as Labour’s reckless jaunt into extremism between 2015 and 2019, Starmer has turned to director of policy Claire Ainsley to make what she calls a “values offer” to the electorate using the “core moral languages” of “care, fairness, loyalty, decency and family”. These characteristics are important but without a context, and in the absence of a bigger picture, they border on banality.
Whereas Tony Blair and Gordon Brown could at least draw on the ‘third way’ theories of academics such as Anthony Giddens and Julian Le Grand, the current leadership has risen largely without ideological trace and so an identifiable Labour agenda scarcely exists beyond what came to be called ‘Corbynism’.
Indeed, what characterises most of the right of the party is a distinct absence of intellectual curiosity and an unwillingness to reflect on the lessons of the Blair period. Having blunted Ed Miliband’s opposition to Tory austerity up to 2015, the Labour right offered no coherent alternative vision to Corbynism thereafter. Instead, they engaged in a wholly negative and destructive war of opposition. Under Starmer, when presumably their influence could be much greater, there are few signs of vitality.
The best on offer seems to be Rachel Reeves who has made some limited criticisms of new Labour’s economics. But she characterises the current task as rebuilding a national economy “with the support of all those prepared to put national reconstruction first – managers, small business owners, workers, unions and beyond”, and champions “common decency and togetherness”, which could lead us anywhere. There is no boldness or vision, or any systemic answers to systemic questions.
Supporters of the leadership now have a majority on Labour’s National Executive Committee and are in control of the party machine. Meanwhile, the Forde report hovers overhead in a ghostly legal limbo; Jeremy Corbyn remains suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party with no reconciliation in prospect; and members continue to be suspended without proper explanation. As red fades to mauve, some comrades have (mistakenly) chosen to leave in frustration and disappointment.
And yet, the new Tory interventionism actually validates the idea that public spending is vital in pursuit of ‘levelling up’. Sunak doesn’t really believe in equality (as revealed when the budget’s hidden austerity measures were exposed), but the Labour Party does and, correctly handled over time, it should be helpful that the government is legitimising the party’s central purpose.
As reluctant as I am to agree with Philip Collins, a former speech writer for Tony Blair with scant regard for the left, he nevertheless makes an important point when he argues that the Labour leadership needs to hold the Conservatives to their promise of levelling up by imposing its own definition.
“Left to their own devices, the Tories will define levelling up in the most minimal way possible: through the money that travels north from Westminster. Even the distant goal of regional equality will be discarded soon enough.
“Real levelling up, though, is not about places. It is about people in places. A government that is serious about achieving equality would be setting itself targets for educational attainment, for university entrance, for life expectancy, for morbidity, for pay and progression. It would be talking about the everyday details of people’s life chances, not just applying a lick of paint to a dilapidated town or, in the case of Sunak’s patch, another coat of paint where none is required.
“This is the way to turn the Tories’ levelling up agenda against them. Keir Starmer’s next big intervention should welcome the ambition and then define it in a way that horrifies the Tories, philosophically because they don’t agree, and practically because they know they can’t achieve it. Take the Conservative Party at its word and help the public work out that its words are cheap.”
Labour could also point out that, despite government rhetoric, the Institute for Fiscal Studies is predicting spending reductions of £9 billion in unprotected departments such as the Crown Prosecution Service and the courts, and further cuts to local government. According to the IFS, “the first half of the 2020s could feel like the austerity of the 2010s”, which is “difficult to reconcile with a coherent ‘levelling up’ agenda”.
Core left concerns
Labour’s policy process is now underway, conducted through the National Policy Forum with eight commissions taking hearings on a number of areas. Many of these – such as rebuilding post-pandemic, a green recovery, social care and climate justice – are core left concerns.
The left should use this review, and any other opportunity, to push for an elaborated and updated version of the ‘Ten Pledges’ Starmer outlined in his leadership election campaign. This would provide the basics of a social democratic programme and is the least we should expect, as groups such as the Northern England Labour Left have recognised.
This is not just a matter of going through the motions. As recent experience in the United States shows, pushing more radical policies can make a real difference.
Some now suggest President Biden, a traditional centrist, is setting out his stall to become the Franklin D Roosevelt of the 21st century. If so, it will be the radical programmes of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and networks such as Democratic Socialists of America that provide the policy framework.
This is not because Biden has suddenly become a leftist; it’s the reality that Clintonesque triangulation is simply not possible in the USA anymore. Similarly, however much some might wish it otherwise, an updated version of the Blairite third way has little mileage here.
This is not to suggest that the economic, social, political and constitutional crises in Britain are quite as severe as those in post-Trump America. But it does mean Starmer may have no alternative but to be more radical than his instincts usually allow. If so, a portfolio of policies fit for ‘a second Clement Attlee’ will be important.
As with Joe Biden, this might seem an unlikely scenario right now. But in these unpredictable times change comes quickly and the left needs to be ready.
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David Connolly is chair of the ILP.
See also, ‘Labour “Under New Management”’ and ‘Starmer’s (Un)Balancing Act’, both by David Connolly.
11 May 2021
Yes John, likely you would. But if the alternative is a Conservative government??
25 April 2021
But if you succeed in getting electoral reform (which we all know is code for proportional representation), you will be stuck trying to work with the very same parties you have just stated (with good reason) you don’t want to work with.
25 April 2021
Thanks to William and David for their responses to my input.
Yes, the difficulties you describe in building the necessary alliances are real. But if the alternative is to continue to be governed by the Tories?
No, I do not think now is the time to give up on Labour; but now is the time to seek to transform it into the leader of progressive politics, building and welcoming a broad base of support across a wide spectrum of opinion. Yes, we have disagreements with the Lib Dems, SNP, Greens. That is why the different parties exist, to articulate the different perspectives. But it doesn’t mean there are not loads of things we do agree on. The question is, are we (well, Labour) big enough to take on the task of leadership that is needed, to make the kind of progress I am suggesting?
The alternative (same old, same old) is depressing.
20 April 2021
Thanks all for a helpful discussion.
I’d like to add a couple of minor points to the comments David makes on progressive alliances. Not only is it difficult to decide if Liberals can be counted as progressive (following the coalition government in particular), but the same is increasingly true of the Greens, at least in a non-UK context.
As Foreign Policy magazine noted last year, Conservative-Green coalitions are on the rise in Europe, led by Austria, with Germany potentially adding to the list in the near future. Could anyone be sure they would resist the lure of governmening (albeit with the Tories) if the chance arose?
The second point is that pacts or deals with the SNP are by their very nature likely to be short-lived. The price of SNP support, as we know, is a second referendum. If that occured, and was won, Labour would have conceded much for a very temporary period of support.
As David notes, none of this precludes cross-party working on a range of issues, including perhaps, pursuing electoral reform.
Best wishes, Will
19 April 2021
Thanks for your post Vicky. I don’t think anyone in the ILP or on the left generally has a problem working with people from other political parties, nor those of none, or from single issue campaigns relating to questions of racism, environmentalism and peace, etc. Most of us have done so at a local level many times, usually with positive outcomes.
And, beyond that, I can see the political logic of creating a modern Popular Front type of movement in defence of democratic ideas and practices against a fascist threat, should that ever be necessary in this country.
But none of this can obscure the underlying left / right differences about the unequal distribution of wealth and power in society, which remains the fundamental conflict in society even if the boundaries between different ideologies get blurred sometimes.
The Compass argument for a progressive alliance has to be taken seriously and there is no doubt that their long-running campaign is gaining a bigger hearing in the Labour Party these days, as is support for proportional representation. But there are questions to be asked.
The first is what exactly counts as progressive? In my view, the Liberal Democrats’ role in the coalition government of 2010-15 effectively destroyed their Keynes and Beveridge inheritance and was anything but progressive.
Likewise, the SNP and Alba are leading their supporters up the cul-de-sac of independence. As with the Brexiteers, they exaggerate the benefits of national sovereignty while turning a blind eye to the manifest disadvantages of breaking with the UK. If their preferred scenario of returning Scotland to the European Union is ever implemented this could eventually include a hard border just north of Berwick-upon-Tweed even though 60 per cent of Scottish exports currently go to or through England.
Secondly, there are immense practical and time-consuming problems involved in how such a broad coalition is to be managed, the economic and social programme it stands on, who is to speak on what subjects and, not least, exactly who would fight each seat at a general election.
And thirdly, given that in England a large section of the Liberal vote is more hostile to Labour than they are to the Conservatives, can we really be sure that a progressive alliance isn’t just creating the conditions for an even bigger bloc of Tory voters in the future? Conversely, there will be a significant proportion of the Labour vote that will refuse to vote for anyone else other than Labour.
By all means, in these unpredictable times, let us co-operate with others on specific issues but, despite our frustrations with it, now is not the time to give up on Labour.
14 April 2021
Ben is right, Keir Starmer’s 10 pledges should not be seen as tablets of stone and personally I’ve never seen them in that way. Circumstances are constantly changing and leaders are entitled to respond appropriately, not least to the Covid pandemic and its consequences but nor can these pledges be properly described as ‘wishy washy’.
A surprising number of them are quite specific: abolition of tuition fees, introduction of a Prevention of Military Intervention Act, repeal of the Trade Union Act, abolition of Universal Credit, the end of outsourcing in the NHS, local government and the judicial system, and common ownership of public utilities.
Other commitments were more general but overall the pledges are designed to indicate a broad acceptance of the Corbyn / McDonnell economic and social programme, and many people, myself included, voted for Starmer on that basis. This was not done out of political naivety but in the hope that a meaningful dialogue could be had between the leadership and the membership.
But if none of this ever really mattered, and if those words were of no great significance to Starmer himself, then so be it. If so, it’s a poor way to treat your members and does him no credit at all.
On the question of the union jack, I find myself in disagreement with Ben. While no great expert on the history of the British empire there was certainly more than one genocide committed by the imperial power.
When the British arrived in Tasmania in 1803, they decided to turn the island into a giant sheep farm and of course a penal colony. By violent means in the years up to 1835 they reduced an estimated aboriginal population of 10,000 people, whose ancestors had arrived 35,000 years ago, to 500 disease ridden alcoholic souls isolated on Flinders Island. For a definitive account on how this was done see The Last Man: A British Genocide in Tasmania by Tom Lawson.
A similar process was under way on a bigger scale over a far longer period of time in Australia itself, something officially recognised by the Rudd government in 2008 but yet to be acknowledged by any government in the UK.
It’s true that after decades of dogged campaigning, slavery was abolished but only after the slave owners were compensated for their ‘loss of property’ to the tune of £340 billion in today’s money. Even then the former slaves in the West Indies became ‘apprentices’ required to work ‘no more than 45 hours per week’ without compensation, although generously they were paid for any additional labour after that time.
My point is that genocide and slavery were pursued under the union jack and, as such, it is not some historically neutral symbol, it is to some, including myself, a symbol of domination, exploitation and cruelty on a massive scale.
Unless and until we educate people to understand this, starting with the school curriculum, then using the union jack to indicate a love of country, which at a basic level is nothing more than that which is familiar to us, is fundamentally flawed.
That Keir Hardie could be ambiguous about the British empire is just one aspect of the Labour movement’s failings on this subject and these shortcomings have existed for decades, the ILP’s Fenner Brockway and his comrades in the Movement for Colonial Freedom excepted.
9 April 2021
I think David writes lucidly and thoughtfully and I agree – who doesn’t? – that Starmer needs to put forward a bold vision of what Great Britain could be like under Labour. I am not sure whether the core of that should be his 10 wishy washy pledges. I have already spoken at an ILP meeting about the lack of radicalism in the renationalisation plans. Ken makes a good point about the Green agenda and reminds me that the best policy offer at the 2019 election was the Green New Deal. The other game-changing policies were land value tax and employee share ownership. We have heard nothing about them ever since Starmer became leader. I wonder why.
The left should not be backward looking so I disagree that we should hold up Starmer’s 10 pledges like tablets of stone (if you can hold up tablets of stone). The economy and society in 2021 are very different from 2019 and 2020. We must take account of Covid and the changes it is ushering in.
This should include reviving the universal broadband offer. I would prefer Labour to use Bernie Sander’s model rather than Corbyn’s. It is much more commercially viable and sustainable. I would make flexible home-working the norm for all office jobs and some retail (like mobile phone providers). Labour needs a high profile plan for reviving high streets as well. We need to extend reasonable adjustments for disabled pupils, students and staff through developing hybrid online delivery options.
I really liked Vicky’s contribution. I think we should consider working with other organisations at all levels. Labour should not just be an electoral machine; it should be a community organisation that builds capacity in the here and now.
I really didn’t like David’s comment about the union jack. At the moment, the left is suffering because it has been stereotyped as hating Britishness. This message has got through in a really profound way to former Labour voters. I don’t disagree that England and Great britian has done terrible things including one genocide: slavery. It also abolished slavery and set up the West Africa squadron to counter it. To show the corruption of Empire, I would teach every school child about the massacre at Amristsar and the Fall of Singapore. But I love my country and have no problem with our flag. In the words of George Lansbury, “Although I love England very dearly … I am a convinced internationalist.” In that vein, it is worth remembering Jimmy Maxton’s most famous quote: “If you can’t ride two horses at once you shouldn’t be in the [bloody] circus.”
And here by the way are photos of ILP-ers Keir Hardie and George Lansbury next to union jacks. I doubt very much if today’s Keir actually has one hanging in his front room as the founder of the Labour Party did. No signs of revulsion there, despite the Boer War.
7 April 2021
Thank you David for putting your perspective out for us all to comment on. Much of it we can all agree on. Politics is very depressing at the moment. We are all looking for an uplift and struggling to find one. I have read your article side-by-side with what Neal Lawson of Compass has written. For me, he offers an attractive approach. You make similar points, with your suggestion of developing Keir Starmer’s 10 pledges.
Several points from my perspective:
First, in this period of pandemic, people want to see everyone pulling together, not scoring political points, so it has been a difficult, if not impossible time for an opposition leader to pitch into the Government’s approach, and Starmer has had to be very careful. Very frustrating for him, I am sure.
Secondly, in 2019 the electorate firmly rejected the possibility of a left government led by a hard left politician. Yes, there were all kind of lies told and a biased press did huge damage. But those are the realities that face us. We cannot just say, “It is not fair.” No it isn’t, but that does not get us anywhere. We have to think of a different approach.
Thirdly, I think we need to look and work beyond the traditional left/right polarisations, both within the Labour Party, and beyond the Labour Party, to build a politics of working together with other organisations and parties. This is very counter to the current culture of the Labour Party. And not many on the left are arguing for it. We need to find things that resonate with others; find ways to work together on those specific policy issues; and, in doing so, build trust and agreed practices for working together. We need to focus on the issues and develop a different way of doing politics.
Fourthly, Johnson has certainly trespassed onto our policy territory to gain support. The fact that his manner of going about it means he will not deliver what he promised needs to be exposed. Yes, we need to say, “We agree that issue needs to be addressed – and will you now commit to a, b, and c in order to deliver it?” That means we need to be two or three steps ahead of him and be ready with our a, b and c.
Regards, Vicky
7 April 2021
Thanks for your response, Ken. My aim was to produce a general survey of the party’s leadership rather than focus on specific policies as such but I can assure you that I am as scared about climate change as the next person.
Over the past year it’s been the subject most discussed in the Chester-le-Street branch Labour Party, which I chair, both in terms of understanding the mammoth scale of the problem and also in identifying possible solutions, such as using warm trapped mine water (we have a lot of it up here) to generate heat for former mining villages on the coast, as proposed by the Energy Institute at Durham University. As a result our branch members are well informed and I have no doubt they would be campaigning on the streets if they could.
I do agree that credible and urgent environmental and climate policies are one of the keys to a Labour recovery, whoever is leader, and something that just about everyone in the party could get behind, you would hope.
6 April 2021
While I quite agree the potential of a Labour victory at the next general election is remote, and I accept the fact Starmer was dealt a very bad hand when he took over from Corbyn, I still believe he has lost several opportunities to offer the electorate a different vision. As a recent Guardian leader article states, Keir Starmer needs to paint a picture of Britain under Labour.
In David’s contribution to the leadership debate he makes no mention of the threat that climate change, according to UN scientists, is liable to have upon the population. He does mention green policies, but I detected it wasn’t seen as a priority issue. In my humble opinion it is the very issue upon which we could change the economy.
There were two issues last week which Labour should have responded to publicly. Defra revealed in a report that every canal, lake, pond and river in England was polluted, contaminated with a variety of chemicals. It noted that it was killing animals and creatures, some becoming extinct. The other report stated there is no regular testing of the nation’s drinking water. I have not read or heard of any response from Labour on these reports. Here we are, 12 months into the largest public health emergency since the Great Plague, and the Labour Party has nothing to say about the reports of which I have spoken.
Labour has two months to prepare a major political offensive in time for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. We need to announce Labour’s answer to climate change, exposing the Tories for failing to prepare for the tempest. Labour needs to be asking every local authority what their plans are for dealing with the forecast rise in sea levels, what plans they have for evacuation of towns and cities, and what health provisions exist. All of this would really upset the Tories because they have no cohesive plans.