Three Aprils ago, Sir Keir Starmer took over a UK Labour party in the electoral and moral pits. He lost his first 18 months to a pandemic that made the role of opposing the Conservative government seem almost unpatriotic. He has the “help” of a shadow cabinet that, as a gathering of talent in one room, no one would confuse with the Philadelphia Convention.
All criticism of Starmer has to be put in that context. But the criticism isn’t frivolous. A shrinking poll lead — it is down from 27 points to around 18 under prime minister Rishi Sunak — is a circular nightmare for Labour. The smaller Starmer’s likely majority after the next election, the more Conservatives will warn that leftwing backbenchers will have the casting vote in his government. This puts people off Labour, which tightens the polls further, which in turn strengthens the argument. This is how the Tories won in 2015, with Scottish Nationalist MPs in place of leftist Labour ones as the tail, and Ed Miliband in place of Starmer as the dog being wagged.
Starmer has more or less contained the hard left. But that is the lesser task. Extremists are small in number and so objectionable as to be spotted a mile off. Labour’s historic problem, the author of its defeats in 1992, 2015 and too many other years, is the soft left.
Between a Tony Blair and a Jeremy Corbyn is a vast tranche of opinion that is neither extreme nor electable. You will know the type. They have private qualms about new gender norms but don’t want to fall out with their children. They had misgivings about Corbyn but went along with him rather than lose the frisson of tribal belonging that politics confers on the rootless. Where the hard left has written doctrine, the soft left has icons: Justin Trudeau, Greta Thunberg and Jacinda Ardern have all filled the slot over the past decade.
The soft leftists are the people that Starmer has to upset. Again and again. And in full view of the public. Only when he is resented by most of his own party will swing voters believe he is a true moderate. This means telling trade unions that structural reform, not just spending restraint, is coming to public services. It means a clearer and more traditional line on the culture wars than anything he has summoned to date.
But it also means a more thorough reckoning with the past. The problem with Corbyn was not, as the soft left has it, that he was unelectable. It was that he was wrong on substance and kept bad company. In fact, had he been electable, Labour MPs would have been more honour-bound to oppose him, not less: to act as citizens, not party members.
Labour under Starmer is disturbingly confused on this point. Consider the reported wording of an internal resolution against Corbyn. “The Labour party’s interests, and its political interests at the next general election, are not well served by Mr Corbyn running as a Labour party candidate.”
Or this from shadow cabinet member Emily Thornberry, explaining that decision to the New Statesman: “In the end it is all about the movement and getting a Labour victory.” The spendthrift economics, the anti-western instincts on foreign policy: none of it was wrong in principle. It just sold badly.
Labour will say two things here. One is that the Tories elected Boris Johnson as their leader, so let’s call it even. No, let’s not. There is no equivalence between the populist right and the Marxist left. If you find this unfair, please take it up with the electorate, who chose the one over the other by a landslide.
The other line of deflection will be that voters care about the future, not the past. This isn’t true either. The two things aren’t as extricable as that. The best guide to Starmer in office is Starmer in opposition. He was campaigning to make Corbyn prime minister as recently as December 12 2019. Had voters not done the work of ending the hard-left project on that election night, he would now be serving it in cabinet. Tories will bring this up with sadistic frequency as the election nears.
No one is going to believe that Labour’s current leadership is extreme. The line that might stick is that it is too weak and tribal to face down extremists, or to say no to the unions. That is the eternal soft-left vice: an almost physical abhorrence of falling out with one’s own. “Are we the bad guys?” is the thought that haunts it.
This explains why the British choose Labour prime ministers from the very right of the party, when they choose them at all. It explains a statistic that gets updated with metronomic predictability every 12 months. Tony Blair is the only Labour leader born in the last 107 years to win a general election.
janan.ganesh@ft.com
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