The threat to Starmer may come from the Left

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6 days ago

Politicians are adrift. They don't know how to tell people the truth without frightening the horses – and perhaps it's not surprising. Countries with ageing populations, low growth and high migration are unhappy ones, especially if, like Britain, they are running a trade deficit, debt at nearly 100 per cent of GDP, and a budget deficit all at once. We spend more on servicing our debt than on defence. This is unsustainable. Sooner rather than later, the bailiffs will come with the bill.
Enter Labour. Its solution to these problems, during last year's election campaign, was a single word: change. Or, to put it another way, throw out the Conservatives. Once they've gone, renewal can begin. Not just because Labour values are better than Tory ones, but because Labour people are, too. Nicer, kinder, gentler, they would – by their mere presence in government – generate national recovery. The result was spectacular: Labour won 411 seats. Two hundred and thirty one of those MPs were new to Parliament – over half.
Now imagine yourself as one of them – elected, as you saw it, to distribute ever-larger subsidies to your grateful constituents (paid for by the taxes of those who don't vote for you). First of all, you were ordered, in the wake of your triumph at the polls, to tramp through the lobbies in support of the two-child benefit cap – and told that if you didn't, you would lose the whip. Next, only a few days later, came the news that this new Labour Government would cut the winter fuel allowance.
Finally, some six months later, it was announced that £5 billion would be saved annually from the welfare bill by measures including reassessments for incapacity benefits for those capable of work, and the focusing of some disability benefits on those with higher needs. Your response would doubtless be – as many of theirs surely was – to look hard at yourself in the mirror. Did you really come into Parliament for this? To boost child poverty, let needy pensioners freeze and take away support from disabled people?
Enter John McDonnell, once Jeremy Corbyn's shadow chancellor. Like Corbyn, he's a man of the hard Left. Unlike him, he won his seat in Hayes and Harlington under the Labour banner last year, only to lose the whip a few weeks later for voting against the two-child benefit cap.
Earlier this week, he surfaced to call for a change of leadership: 'Unless party members, affiliated unions and MPs stand up and assert themselves to take back control of Labour … we may not only lose a government. We could also lose a party.'
McDonnell is an old stager who has been active in the Labour movement for most of his adult life, has sat in Parliament for over a quarter of a century, and is marinated in the arcana of the party's rulebook, trade union networks and culture. He has nothing to lose and an acute sense of timing: shark-like, he can smell blood in the water. Last week, Sir Keir Starmer conceded that the winter fuel allowance cuts will be ameliorated. Don't know where, don't know when – but it will happen.
This looked rushed. And it was. The classic means of executing a U-turn is to reverse the original decision: humiliating, certainly; expensive, usually – but at least closing down the problem (whatever it may have been) and moving events on. Instead, speculation will now run on: how many pensioners will gain from concessions? What will they be? How many will still lose out? The same destabilising process is at work over the two-child benefit cap. Sir Keir now says that Labour will 'look at all options, always, of driving down child poverty'.
He is caught in a trap of his own devising. By campaigning on the basis of change – but without a worked-through conception of what the change would be – Labour sacrificed depth for breadth. An Old Labour-type plan would have won the party fewer seats, but given it a clearer mandate. A New Labour-style plan might well have achieved the same. Instead, Sir Keir finds himself with New Labour-flavoured fiscal rules but Old Labour spending commitments. Something has to give.
As it does, Labour will move further Left – under pressure from greens, independents, Islamists and the instincts of his own MPs. No wonder Angela Rayner, burnishing her own leadership credentials, is proposing further tax rises.
And, let's face it, McDonnell has a point: 'The public got view of the distasteful sight of Labour ministers accepting gifts, tickets and donations from the rich and corporate carpetbaggers,' he wrote.
There's the rub. Labour people are no less vain, weak and vulnerable than anyone else – a lesson for its MPs to take to heart, as public contempt threatens to overwhelm them.
Lord Goodman of Wycombe is a senior fellow at Policy Exchange
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