‘Keir Starmer’s Transformational Political Project is Being Grossly Underestimated’

It is no time at all since Keir Starmer’s Labour Party achieved a Blair-style election victory from a relatively small share of the vote. With support perfectly spread across marginal constituencies, it was an astonishingly efficient result which was described by the political journalist Anushka Asthana, in Taken As Red, as nothing less than ‘a strategic coup’. 

However, during this first phase of Starmer’s newly-minted Government criticism has been relentless, verging on the complete delegitimisation of its right to be in Office.

One line of attack focuses on perceived political own goals, not least the removal of the winter fuel allowance for all but those entitled to pension credit.

Yet, we hear relatively little about the distributional policy effects of the 14 years of Conservative rule. How retirees, possessing a lion’s share of accumulated assets, and beneficiaries of the triple lock, were better protected from the privations of austerity than the working age population. Younger demographics particularly struggled with stalled incomes, precarious employment and unaffordable housing. This inter-generational unfairness could cynically be attributed to a propensity on the part of the over-65s to vote Conservative.

Other disparaging attack lines include equating Starmerism with a form of re-heated Blairism, or centrism, which is likely to suffer a similar fate to that of US President Joe Biden, or German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, come the next UK general election.

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Radical Intent 

Yet deriding the new Government, merely on the part of privileged vested interests too used to having their bidding done, but also by those guilty of what Chris Grey in Byline Times has referred to as ‘fiscal nimbyism’, gives insufficient credit to the sweep of its reform programmes.

Those reforms embrace the labour market, railways, transition to clean energy, early years provision, school metrics, a better resourced and differently focused NHS, national care service, rental market, house building targets, policing strategy, sentencing policy, migrant trafficking, tax avoidance by the wealthy, employment services and local transport provision.

That is by no means all. There is the closer collaboration with UK regions and nations, bringing more coherence into local government structures, re-setting European relations and a broader planned re-wiring of the British state. Account must also be taken of institutional innovations such as a National Wealth Fund, Great British Energy and those around a new industrial strategy. And perhaps most significantly the revision of fiscal rules in the first budget delivered by Rachel Reeves to upgrade much neglected public infrastructural investment.   

Of course, most of this is still needs to come to fruition, though reform will clearly gather momentum as 2025 progresses. 

The sheer volume of disparaging criticism is particularly notable given the truly lamentable record of Conservative Governments between 2010-24. An economy starved of investment, further damaged by austerity, Brexit, a mismanaged pandemic and trickle-down Trussonomics all contributed to a woeful legacy. The consequence was low growth, poor productivity and stagnant living standards, with indicators as basic as life expectancy defying previously improving trends and leaving a dire fiscal inheritance for an incoming Government. This is to barely mention the endemic scandal and corruption that defined it, most notably during the Johnson years.

It left Anthony Seldon and Tom Egerton in The Conservative Effect struggling to identify any comparable period with so little to celebrate and in which the country had been reduced to such a discontented, fractious mood. This verdict was reached despite Seldon’s open mind, during the early phase of his Premiership, about Boris Johnson turning out to be one of those rare game changing leaders in Downing Street, when others saw precisely what was coming given his character flaws.

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Post Neo-Liberal Politics

To make sense of contemporary political waters, our reference point, though, needs a much longer historical context. Here Karl Polanyi’s classic twentieth century work on The Great Transformation retains its compelling appeal. As classical liberal market principles became more pervasive, transforming society into a series of transactional and instrumental relationships, so the instability that generated created conditions for the political and international cataclysm that was eventually to consume the 1930s and from the ashes of which new post-1945 institutional structures were forged.

Yet, as memories gradually slipped, earlier lessons went unheeded. The subsequent neo-liberal era, in turn, culminated in the 2007-08 financial crash, once again with market principles seeping into every crevice of society. From a UK vantage point, Torsten Bell (now Labour MP, formerly Chief Executive of the Resolution Foundation) highlights in Great Britain? How We Get Our Future Back a toxic combination of economic inequality emanating from the Thatcherite 1980s and the economic stagnation characterising the period since the financial crisis. 

We are therefore transitioning from that neo-liberal era, a label that increasingly becomes more a hindrance than anything in grappling with the political forces currently taking shape.

A great deal rides on the success – or otherwise – of Starmer’s rebuilding project, if a much more unpleasant populist backlash is to be averted. This is against the backdrop of Donald Trump as disrupter-in-chief re-entering the White House and a right-wing media landscape – especially social media platforms – becoming ever more dystopian.

Analogies drawn between Starmerism and Blairism fail to convince. The former has sought to re-align Labour with the values of the Party’s lost voters, whereas Tony Blair positioned himself in the mainstream of globalisation when at the helm.

Many regarded Starmer as a transitional figure back in 2020, given the daunting prospect of winning back power in just one term after Labour’s 2019 election debacle and as someone without the required political deftness to succeed in that Herculean task. His biographer, Tom Baldwin, even recounts how Starmer himself seriously contemplated resigning his leadership after early electoral setbacks.

Starmer may well need to articulate a more powerful narrative. Yet, just as 2024’s strategic election coup developed from that initial faltering performance as Leader of the Opposition, so it is premature to conclude that initial missteps on the part of the Labour Government will not evolve into similar ruthless strategic focus en route to the 2029 general election.

In these epoch-changing circumstances the challenges for political leadership are, however, much more profound than merely ticking a check list of standard prerequisites for prime ministerial longevity.

Chris Painter is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy and Management at BCU.