Starmer should thank his lucky stars for Donald Trump
In the 1980s he was an anti-establishment lawyer when 'Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, Out, Out, Out' was the simplistic chant of the defeated Left. By the 2000s he had risen to become the Director of Public Prosecutions, joining the very establishment he once railed against. 'Hard man Starmer' was his narrative, not Mr Socialist Lawyer.
When Jeremy Corbyn offered Starmer the chance to back his toxic mix of far-Left economics, pusillanimous foreign policy and a party stained by anti-Semitism, Starmer jumped at the chance. Where more serious and consistent figures such as Rachel Reeves quit the Opposition front bench rather than serve such a ridiculous master, Starmer proposed in both 2017 and 2019 that Corbyn would make a very fine prime minister. He even supported a second Brexit referendum, one of the most wrong-headed policies of the past two decades.
When the Corbyn project failed – as it always would – Starmer won the Labour leadership election in 2020 promising to be 'continuity-Corbyn', including backing public ownership of the railways, the postal service, energy and water. By the end of the year the MP for Islington North had been suspended, ludicrous talk of a 'People's Vote' on the EU banished and Starmer was recasting himself as a mushy Leftist/centrist bank manager who could be trusted to calm everything down.
Voters took a chance, and have suffered buyer's remorse ever since. Last week a poll by the wealth management firm Saltus revealed that confidence amongst high net worth individuals – the entrepreneurs that drive growth – is at its lowest since the poll began in February 2022.
We now have Starmer 4.0 – the man who claims he can get on with Donald Trump and last week refused to sign the European-led pact on controlling artificial intelligence (AI).
America didn't sign it either, J D Vance describing Europe's approach as threatening to 'strangle' new technology and left the AI summit dinner before the Chinese representative spoke.
If anyone is still wondering whether Starmer will face towards the European Union or the US, there is your answer.
Those close to the Labour Government are now briefing that Starmer's weakness for flip-floppery could actually be his strength. Because Starmer does have one principle that he will never resile from – what's in it for Keir Starmer?
As I wrote in November, Trump is just what the Prime Minister needs if he is to ever reconnect with what voters actually want, rather than what the hard-Left unions or comfortable residents of north London think they may want.
What I said then – less net zero, less regulation, less gloom, more growth, growth, growth – has come to pass. Starmer has backed Heathrow expansion and is now planning a major announcement on increased defence spending with Reeves. Yvette Cooper – the Home Secretary – is publishing videos of illegal migrants and foreign criminals being marched on to deportation flights, a move straight from the Trump playbook.
Jonathan Powell, Blair's former chief of staff and now Starmer's National Security Adviser, once said that the job of the UK ambassador to the US was to 'get up the arse of the White House and stay there'. Peter Mandelson, newly appointed to the post in Washington, is doing his very best, talking of Trump's 'dynamism and energy' where he once opined that the president was 'reckless and a danger to the world'.
'I consider my remarks about President Trump as ill-judged and wrong,' Mandelson said in an interview with Fox News, Trump's favourite television channel. 'I think that times and attitudes toward the president have changed since then.'
Yesterday Jonathan Reynolds, the Business Secretary, was gamely arguing that the UK could rediscover its role as the connecting highway between the US and the EU. 'I believe we in the UK can play a part, as that bridge between the US and Europe as we adjust to this new era – and it certainly is a new era,' he told the BBC. There is talk of Prince William being increasingly deployed as a weapon no other country can access, a direct route to Trump's love of royalty and UK flummery.
Ukraine is the wild card, Trump backing a 'peace' deal with the dictator Vladimir Putin that will test the resolve of Europe to take on its duties as the main defender of freedom on the continent – militarily as well as politically. Relying wholly on America's security umbrella is no longer tenable.
Without under-estimating the disaster on Europe's eastern border, where brave Ukraine looks set to be left swinging in the wind, my sources insist there are positive signals of a new mood in the Government. Those around Starmer are finally seized of the opportunity to pivot and make the arguments voters want to hear. 'We need to be reformers, the electorate won't thank us for blaming the Blob,' one key official tells me. Under the considerable cover of the Great Orange Blimp, Starmer could try a radical reinvention and hope everyone notices.
Sadly, the threat of foot-shooting is still very real. Labour was at it again last week, announcing the appointment of Ashley Dalton as a new junior health minister. Dalton had never much bothered voters with her public pronouncements beyond saying that everyone had a right to self‑identify as a llama and that Brexit voters were 'short-sighted' and 'stupid'.
'Woke madness of new Labour health minister' responded The Sun, still the reliable temperature gauge for hard-working Britons. 'I am in despair over this tone-deaf choice,' one well-connected Labour supporting friend WhatsApped me. 'Utterly mind-boggling.' Another source acidly commented: 'Two seconds on Google could have spotted the problem.'
The historical case work of Attorney General and close friend of the PM, Lord Hermer is I am told, 'still causing chaos in Number 10' as the media dig up case after case of the 'Lefty-lawyer' variety. The fact he has represented Gerry Adams in the past has prompted Robert Jenrick to describe him as 'Corbyn in a wig'.
'Don't hire another lawyer with a name ending in 'mer',' is the joke doing the rounds in Whitehall.
Part of me feels sorry for Starmer, a man who lacks a political compass in stormy seas patrolled by gunboats. The economy is flatlining and NHS productivity is falling – the two big tests for this Government. Luckily he does have one skill that could save him – an unerring focus on his own self-preservation. If he doesn't change one outcome is certain. Defeat.
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