‘Keir Starmer is Playing Right Into his Political Opponents’ Hands’

What does Keir Starmer really stand for? That’s the big question facing the Prime Minister after his first few troubled months in office.

Any attempt to satisfyingly answer this question immediately runs into problems. 

For some of Starmer’s supporters, the answer is simply “fiscal responsibility”.

But is it really? Despite promising to fill in the £22 billion black hole in Government finances left by Rishi Sunak, Rachel Reeves has so far ruled out the most straightforward ways of doing so.

By promising to stick to her “red lines” on not raising VAT, income tax, or national insurance, the Chancellor will now have to string together a much larger and more politically fragile coalition of tax rises to make up the difference. 

Already there are signs of these alternative measures falling apart. Within the past couple of days multiple reports have suggested that the Treasury is now likely to ditch Labour’s promise to close a tax loophole on non-doms. Meanwhile lots of other controversial potential tax rises, such as scrapping the single person council tax discount, as well as other new wealth taxes, are also being gradually ruled out. Will there be much left for Reeves to raise by the time we finally reach the Budget?

So what else might be the purpose of Starmer’s Government? Perhaps it is about restoring compassion to our politics. The decision to scrap the Rwanda scheme would certainly point in that direction, as would the Prime Minister’s own conference speech in which he defended the right of people to claim asylum in the UK.

Yet if that’s the case, then why did he choose Italy’s far right leader Georgia Meloni as the host for one of his first big European trips, during which he applauded her immigration policies (which have been condemned by human rights groups) and briefed that his Government would consider mimicking her Albanian offshore asylum processing scheme?

Perhaps then the purpose of Starmer’s Government is simply about restoring integrity to Government after the rule-breaking and self-interest of the Boris Johnson years. The Prime Minister’s decision to appoint a Covid Corruption Commissioner and cancel Government spending on private jets and helicopters should surely give credence to this claim?

Yet if restoring integrity to public office is Starmer’s main aim then why has he chosen to accept so many free gifts and hospitality from political donors and private corporations? And why too have so many of his most senior colleagues been allowed to do the same?

Is it enough for him to simply say that no rules have been broken, while ignoring how bad and self-serving it all looks? Is this really the plan to restore integrity and public service to Government we heard so much about at the general election?

But then maybe we’re setting our sights too high. Perhaps the purpose of his administration is simply about restoring a basic level of competence to Government. After 14 years of political chaos and incompetence, perhaps the real aim of Starmer’s administration is simply to make things function again.

Yet if that’s the case then what are we to make of the constant briefings from Starmer’s colleagues about the alarming levels of dysfunction inside Downing Street? What are we to make of all the stories of Starmer’s most senior aides being at each others throats and of more junior staff feeling betrayed and let down?

But then maybe we are supposed to just dismiss all of this as being the fruit of a biased right-wing press which never wanted Labour in government in the first place. Perhaps it’s all going swimmingly and we’re somehow just not being told about it?

Now it’s certainly the case that some of the coverage of Starmer’s premiership has been unfair and disproportionate. Stories that would have either been ignored, or downplayed, under Boris Johnson, are now receiving front page treatment. Meanwhile many of those most fiercely attacking Starmer are the very same people who most loyally defended all of the worst traits of this Government’s predecessors.

Yet if Starmer really wanted to make that case against his media opponents, then why is his team still bending over backwards for those very same news outlets which are most directly leading the charge against him? Why did he drop his previous pledge to bring in media reform in order to secure an endorsement from The Sun, and why is he now doing friendly sit-downs with the likes of GB News?

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Stepping Into the Void

The big problem for Starmer is that the longer he is in office, the harder it has become to answer any of these questions and understand what, if anything, he really stands for. 

And without that ability to define himself, Starmer is making it incredibly easy for his political opponents to do it for him.

Whether it’s the right wing press seeking to paint him as personally grasping, or his enemies on the left defining him as being unprincipled and bending to power, the Prime Minister is playing directly into their hands at every turn.

Of both of these criticisms it is the latter which could prove to be the most damaging. 

For years Starmer’s critics on the left painted him as being devoid of principle and dishonest. His abandonment of a whole series of key pledges in his leadership campaign led to the charge that he would do anything for power.

For a long time his supporters dismissed this by saying that the Labour leader was merely being ruthless about getting his party back into government – whereupon he would use that power to transform the lives of people in the UK for the better.

Yet while there were some welcome and promising announcements from Starmer’s Government in its first few weeks, almost all of it has since been overshadowed by his decision to strip thousands of pensioners of their winter fuel allowance.

Polling suggests that, more than anything else he has done so far, it is this decision which has come to most define his new Government in the eyes of voters. If the purpose of gaining power was to improve people’s lives then why did he allow his Government to be so primarily defined by a decision to make the lives of the elderly worse?

Of course this is all still very early days and most of this will be forgotten if the Prime Minister can find a way to restore the NHS, fix the economy and pump much-needed investment into the rest of the country’s creeking public sector before the next general election.

Of these measures, the biggest test of success or failure will come not from anything we have seen from 10 Downing Street so far, but from whatever his Chancellor puts into her upcoming Budget.

Get those decisions right and very little of what we have read about in these first few months will really matter. Get it wrong and the negative first impressions his Government has generated so far will settle into something much more lasting and damaging.