Keir Starmer is either a man without enemies, or a man who has done a superb clean up job. The newly elected leader of the Labour Party is that rare thing in British politics: someone without a single scandal in his past. There’s nothing. Not so much as a speeding ticket. It’s all very dull.
But perhaps being dull isn’t the worst thing for Labour right now. Starmer is universally respected within his party and on the opposition benches, even if he doesn’t always arouse a panting desire. Dependable, competent, intelligent: many believe that Starmer is the person to lead Labour out of its greatest election defeat since 1935, and back into government.
Starmer walked the Labour leadership election at the beginning of April, winning 56 per cent of the vote in the first round of the contest. Few expected him to do so well — Starmer is a solid media performer, though not sparkling — but the campaign run by his main leadership rival Rebecca Long-Bailey, the anointed Momentum successor, never really got off the ground.
After a glittering legal career, the 57-year-old human rights lawyer and former director of public prosecutions has enjoyed a meteoric political rise. Elected the MP for Holborn and St Pancras in 2015, frontbench positions rapidly followed: shadow minister for Immigration, and then shadow Brexit secretary, a brief that required Starmer to pore over legislation so complex — and so tedious — that almost no-one else could have done it.
If Starmer has a public image as a bit of a policy wonk, that’s not how the people close to him see him. Friends describe Starmer as gregarious and fun-loving; he is an Arsenal season ticket holder (upper tier, West Stand) whose love of five-a-side football is well known. (Starmer reputedly organises his London team’s games, collecting subs and sending out the texts.) Famously, Starmer has been mooted as the inspiration for the character of dashing human rights lawyer Mark Darcy in Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones novels, although Starmer himself has repeatedly squashed the rumours. He is happily married to wife Victoria, a former solicitor turned therapist, and they live with their two children in Kentish Town.
Since his election as leader, you may have heard friends or colleagues describing Starmer as a centrist on social media. It’s worth pointing out that Starmer isn’t a centrist, a term which has almost become a slur to those on the left: he has pledged to renationalise mail, rail, and water, abolish Universal Credit, and ban tuition fees. None of these policies are centrist — providing, of course, that he sticks to them.
For his part, Starmer has insisted he is a socialist, highlighting his long career as a human rights defender (he helped get the death penalty abolished in Caribbean countries, and represented the McLibel environmental activists against McDonald’s, in the longest case in British legal history).
In reality, Starmer is more of a soft-left Labour leader, in the mould of Ed Miliband. (To reinforce the comparison, Starmer has helpfully brought Miliband, an old friend, into his shadow Cabinet.) Despite Starmer’s claims that he will uphold the radical Corbyn legacy, most people agree that Starmer will move the party back towards the centre-left, although they quibble on how far exactly he will move the needle.
During his campaign, Starmer won over many Momentum supporters — speaking to the Guardian, one volunteer manning his phone bank described hearing Momentum supporters peel over in droves — but not all are convinced. On hearing of Starmer’s victory, the left-wing group issued a statement promising to hold him to his radical campaign pledges. “We have to be there to hold him to account, [and] make sure he sticks to his promises and advances the socialist cause in the party,” Momentum wrote.
Throughout his leadership campaign, Starmer pitched himself as the unity candidate: the person to heal a Labour party that has been riven by internal in-fighting between the right and left wings of the party. “We cannot fight the Tories if we are fighting each other,” Starmer told activists on the campaign trail. “Factionalism has to go.”
His Shadow Cabinet appointments, made last weekend, confirm that he will be moving the party towards the centre ground: in addition to big jobs for Long-Bailey and fellow leadership rival Lisa Nandy (education and foreign secretary, respectively), he has also brought back Rachel Reeves, a heavy-hitter during the Miliband years, and Lord Falconer, a New Labour veteran, as well as a number of prominent Remainer MPs associated with the People’s Vote campaign. Key Corbyn lieutenants, such as Diane Abbott, Ian Lavery, and John McDonnell are out.
The message could not be any clearer: the Corbyn era is over. It’s a message that’s going over well. Momentum aside, the mood within the Labour Party right now is a mood for change. After nearly two decades out of power, most Labour members are craving a leader who is electable, even if he isn’t ideologically pure. They’re tired of being out of power. They just want someone who can win.
Since taking the helm Starmer has been quick to heal old wounds, reaching out to former Labour members who quit over the party’s handling of its anti-Semitism crisis. “I will tear out the poison of anti-Semitism by its roots,” said Starmer in a video posted to social media after his election. Winning back Jewish voters will be critical if Labour is to win a majority in 2024: anti-Semitism came up as an issue on doorsteps repeatedly during the 2019 election.
What can we expect from Starmer moving forward? Forensic scrutiny of the government’s handling — mishandling — of the coronavirus pandemic. “Asking those difficult questions matters,” said Starmer on the BBC’s The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday. (Rumour has it, an unwell Boris Johnson delayed going into hospital so he could watch Starmer’s performance on Marr.) But Starmer has promised not to make coronavirus a political points-scoring exercise: criticism of the government will be constructive, and, he insists, in the public interest.
Watching Starmer on Marr, I thought: if Boris Johnson was willing to delay being hospitalised to see how his political rival performed in his maiden interview, he must be worried. Many Conservative MPs would have viewed a Long-Bailey win like all their Christmases coming at once — they don’t believe such a left-wing candidate is electable. Meeting Starmer, I found him to be friendly, surprisingly charismatic, and above all, competent. The Tories are right to fear him. (Also, he has superb hair — aides say that Starmer keeps a comb in his top pocket, to keep his coiffeur intact.)
After the coronavirus crisis hopefully subsides, Starmer will begin the long trudge back towards electability. No party has ever come back from having so few seats in the House of Commons to win an outright majority. Labour will need to recapture formerly Labour seats in the north-east “Red Wall”, as well as Scotland, if they are to form a government. Many of these voters are socially conservative Brexiteers. If Starmer is to win the Red Wall back, Labour will probably have to adopt positions on issues such as immigration and the EU that make Labour voters in university towns and the south-east uncomfortable.
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But even then, Starmer might not win those Red Wall voters back. Probably Starmer’s biggest weakness is the fact that he was so closely associated with Labour’s disastrous decision to push for a second Brexit referendum, a decision that lost Labour votes in the north. Can Starmer sell himself to former Leave voters as anything other than a metropolitan lawyer who backed Remain? Possibly not.
Herein lies the problem. Social change and the buffeting winds of international politics have fragmented a once-cohesive Labour party into many tiny pieces. Working-class voters in de-industrialised towns don’t share the same pro-EU, socially liberal outlook as university students in the south. The issues-based identity politics favoured by those on the left of the party leaves large swathes of older, centre-left voters cold.
Starmer has to glue the Labour Party back together so that voters don’t see the cracks. And then he has to sell it to the electorate. He has his work cut out. Having met Starmer, I’d say that if anyone can do it, it’s him. But honestly, I don’t envy him.
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