Starmer's Superpower
Starmer is never going to receive the adulation of Blair or Corbyn. He should be grateful.
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As Labour was moving - we now know inexorably - towards government in the late 90s every day felt like a rally and Tony Blair like a superstar. The celebration of him as a once-in-a-generation politician was like nothing the Labour Party had ever experienced. Those were heady days for those on the centre left.
Shortly after his election, Blair reached 93% popularity. His deputy John Prescott even joked at Labour's conference that year that the Blair focus was on that last 7%. 1997 felt like a party - but what Blair and his supporters were never ready to deal with was the inevitable hangover.
It arrived with Iraq from which Blair's popularity - not least with Labour supporters themselves - never recovered. The backlash was sustained and the levels of passion Tony achieved flipped from positive to negative. And while pockets of the left still retain a nostalgia for the man, too many of New Labour's achievements were all too easily overturned by the Coalition and Tory governments that followed.
Blair himself became more brittle. Having made the calamitous decision to go into Iraq he became an evangelist for what he must have once known could never have been an obvious or easy choice. Where he could have argued about the shades of grey he became oblivious to the merits of any argument against the war and deployed the kind of disgraceful ‘with us or with the fascists’ rhetoric that should have no place in any kind of reasonable discourse. The now infamous propaganda machine that had built his image to perfection was turned into a defensive, justificatory engine. The wider purpose was lost in the defence not of Labour but of Tony.
In 2015 Jeremy Corbyn managed to inject real excitement into an otherwise incredibly dispiriting contest to be the leader of the Labour Party. I didn’t vote for him - in part because I could see some (though absolutely not all) of what was coming. But I met hundreds of members who did - and with good reason. He was the only person in that contest who really offered an alternative to the candidates who were far too busy trying to out-bland each other to notice what was happening until it was too late.
I have written often in defence of the thousands who voted for Corbyn.
Yes, there are some awful elements on the left, and the antisemitism broke my heart. A personal low point was crying in a meeting of my own branch as they tried (and thankfully failed) to pass a motion dismissing the pain we were causing the Jewish community. I was at the heart of the fight. But I also met hundreds - if not thousands - who were wonderful people - of all ages and races - who were inspired by the idea of something new and different. Of a Socialism that wasn’t afraid of its own shadow (even as it turned out to be unaware of its own darker side). Those people have a valid role to play in Labour politics and ideas and energy that should not be dismissed or driven out.
In 2017, Corbyn managed to bring the energy he had injected into the Labour Party to the country and came within a whisker of causing the biggest political that British politics would have known. The energy of rallies dismissed as just the faithful celebrating themselves caught fire in the country and Corbynism came very close to government.
There was an energy there, but the seeds of the destruction of Corbyn had - in my view - been planted during the 2016 leadership contest when Owen Smith challenged Corbyn and got smashed in doing so.
At the time this felt to all sides like the total triumph of Corbynism. But that campaign was centred not on the politics but on the man. And not then even on the man and who he really was. The personalising of that contest and the driving of it by the unrealistic emotions and expectations placed on him could only ever set this flawed individual up for a later fall. And in sidelining the politics to focus on his martyrdom, they failed to make the case for that politics. Once again making much of that easier to overturn (though I think the case that Labour has completely moved away from a more ambitious left wing politics is overstated - which I will come to).
The Summer campaign of 2017 had a real optimism to it. People felt that Corbyn was offering a change unlike any seen in politics for ages. The youthquake was massively overstated, but there was a sense that young people were being listened to electorally in a way that hadn’t been the case before. Labour’s vibe was positive and optimistic and they took the Tories on in unexpected ways - such as going after police cuts that blindsided a right wing who expected Labour to be more about defunding the police than raising their numbers. It didn’t win. But it did unexpectedly well.
But by the winter of 2019 those heady summer days were long behind Corbyn and his party and they crashed to a historic defeat. In part, this was down to the hubris of those surrounding Corbyn. They started to believe their own propaganda and failed to continue to try and reach the country. They fell out with the Remain coalition of centrists who had lent them their votes. They weren’t gifted a PM with no campaigning skills, but one who was all campaigning. They were defeated heavily. And their legacy was tarnished by their utter inability to deal with the toxicity that had flooded into the party behind them.
Keir Starmer seemed like the inevitable winner from the start of the post-Corbyn leadership contest. Rebecca Long-Bailey was too tainted by the Corbyn years. Nandy - a political thinker I admire greatly - ran a poor campaign. Starmer hoovered up a lot of the talent from across the party - Blairites and Corbynites were brought into the fold to help him win. And he did so handily.
Starmer does not receive Blair-like levels of adoration in the country or Corbyn-style fandom in the party. His approval ratings are not particularly high for a man who seems currently destined to take over at the top. Should he be worried though? Some believe that the lack of adulation is a problem. For me though, it is actually Keir Starmer’s quiet superpower.
In Britain, if we put people on a pedestal, it's usually so that sooner or later it makes them an easy target to hit with the rotten fruit we eventually want to throw at all politicians. So it may well be, that by not being the embodiment of excessive hopes and dreams, Stamer will actually have an easier time - even as he is proposing to deliver changes that would transform Britain in more fundamental ways than Blair felt able to.
Starmer's programme includes changes to both our constitution and economy that would have truly lasting effects. Labour’s wide-ranging constitutional proposals (and despite the focus of the commentary they are about much more than Lords reform) will change how the country is run - freeing communities from the grip of Whitehall in general and the Treasury in particular. This could have significant effects not just for what local government can do and how that can boost productivity locally and nationally, but also for the kinds of voices and talent we can attract into local government when it becomes a much more interesting place to be.
The investment Labour is also promising at a national level in the green economy is both extremely sensible and quietly radical. The UK is incredibly well placed to be at the forefront of green technologies and the government creating the conditions to do so will be both supportive of our long term environmental and economic needs. It is a well-costed win/win that is sold (and occasionally criticised from the left) as too incremental but would actually embed real and lasting change.
I am not being Pollyannaish about what will and won’t happen under a Starmer government. As someone who is significantly to the left of Starmer economically, I won’t get everything I want. But I do feel that I will get real movement in the right direction as well as incremental changes that might - just might - open up possibilities to us that haven’t been politically available for a very long time.
Of course, Starmer will also have a massive inbox of problems handed to him by twelve years of appalling Tory failure. Sunak’s reheated Cameronian austerity is the worst medicine for the damage that these cuts have already done. But we will be inheriting a highly fragile and deeply spooked economy.
So of course, Starmer will have to make the usual Labour promises of repairing the damage that Tory governments do to our public services - but a Starmer government will have the mandate to do more than just this.
But what he won't be is the embodiment of that change. He is a manager of a programme, not a messianic leader. No one is going to be chanting his name football style (or cult-like) as they did with both Blair and Corbyn. Starmer is solid and dependable. He’s the dad behind the barbecue serving up what is needed with a quiet sense of purpose. He’s a workhorse, not a show pony. He’s not a charismatic leader - but he is leaning into that by offering instead a sense of purpose.
In the end, that quiet capability could be what actually delivers a real programme of deep and lasting change. Doing radical things by making them seem ordinary scares a tired and jaded electorate significantly less than the superstar posturing of a Blair, Corbyn or Boris.
We hear a lot that politics these days is about 'vibes'. But the results of politics are about changing lives. If Starmer continues to retain a dull competence while delivering such change, that may be the thing that ultimately makes him a significantly more effective politician - in legacy terms - than the superstars ever were.
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What I’ve been up to
Only one review this time. The very affecting Harry’s Christmas at the King Head theatre. It’s dark and tough at times. But it’s very well performed and delivered and I highly recommend it.
This will be my last post before Christmas. I’ll be back before the end of the year to do a big round up. But in the meantime have a wonderful festive period. Thank you all once again for reading, sharing, responding and sharing your thoughts. It is incredibly satisfying that we really seem to have built something here.
Questions, comments and arguments are very welcome. Insults will get you summarily blocked on every platform that no longer hosts Donald Trump. I’m at emmaburnell@gmail.com or on Twitter (far too often) at @EmmaBurnell_
You know who else had a reputation for dullness? Clement Atlee. And look what he achieved.
Thoughtful and interesting piece. Like you I feel reasonably optimistic about Keir Starmer and that he's a steady hand on the tiller which is what we desperately need right now.
I did vote for Corbyn because I liked and trusted the man who'd been my local MP for so many years. The 2019 election campaign and subsequent defeat broke my loyalty and I now hope, though doubt, that he will find something else to do before the next election to save the mess that will result in Islington North should he do otherwise (not holding my breathe).