Keir Starmer is no politician – but this could be his strength

New Statesman​

3 days ago

If you cut him, would he bleed? Nobody knows. Keir Starmer is one of the strangest of all the odd characters we have had in No 10: perhaps we are only just beginning to realise just how different he is.
He does almost none of the obvious things a prime minister 'must' do. With few exceptions, he doesn't speak to the cabinet. By speak, I mean properly, confidentially, deeply – not just exchanging phrases in a meeting. He doesn't speak to his other ministers either. He doesn't read newspapers, magazines or blogs. He's not in the Commons. He doesn't make uplifting speeches. At the recent cabinet away day at Chequers he delighted ministers present by explaining why he was in politics.
But it was their surprise, even relief, that was eloquent. What he said was the down-to-earth, autobiographical account an averagely egotistical prime minister would repeat while asleep. This curiously closed man seems surrounded by other politicians and advisers who can explain him better than he can.
The downsides of his behaviour are by now well understood. The New Statesman has been charting the problem of dropping policies well before you have won the argument about them; of having no personal relationship with MPs on whom your legislation depends; of failing to develop an emotional connection with voters when your enemies can.
Another downside, largely unreported, is an atmosphere of distancing and thinking beyond Starmer inside the cabinet. This is not, I must emphasise, a 'leadership plot'. We must move beyond the clichés. One senior minister says: 'There is no active conversation going on, but a lot of us are looking at the restlessness of the party and we think it's serious.'
There are two obvious crisis points ahead after the summer break. One comes next May with the Scottish, Welsh and English local elections. If Labour is absolutely hammered up and down the country, Starmer's leadership will come into question. Scotland is probably going to go better than the commentators expect – the best result in 20 years, predicts one insider.
The more serious challenge doesn't yet have a date attached: that is the possibility of a Truss-style market meltdown sufficient to destroy Rachel Reeves' chancellorship. Her frustration with Labour critics who don't understand how close to the edge the British economy stands, is completely understandable. Long-dated UK gilt yields (5.5 per cent last week) are already at levels not seen since 1998. For a lot of public debt, repayments recur frequently. Government sources worry about the 'extraordinary' lack of a senior economic policy adviser in No 10, which leaves the Treasury to itself while Downing Street is 'constantly racking up the bills'.
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The bond markets are watching all the stuttering, over-indebted 'advanced' (aka sclerotic) economies like vultures. In the eurozone, France is in obvious trouble. But there is a particular focus on Britain, and not just because of Liz Truss and not just for technical reasons. After the U-turn on welfare cuts, the markets are asking whether this Labour government is really in control. Will it be forced to come back for substantial new borrowing?
These are the big questions ahead of the Autumn Budget. They go a long way towards explaining the removal of the whip from rebels. If Starmer and Reeves are really committed, as the Prime Minister says, to lifting the two-child cap, there would have to be major spending cuts elsewhere, or tax rises, to compensate. In all this, Wes Streeting's fight with the resident doctors has become the political front line. It's lucky that he is the best political explainer, by far, the government has.
Reeves has possible tweaks to make which could bring her up to £15bn extra and is doubtless looking at other moves: a banking levy and a gambling tax. But without tight spending control, that is all loose change – and she would have to turn to the big tax promises made at the election. Bringing investment income into line with income tax, as Angela Rayner has suggested, would be a possible answer, though that too has consequences for growth. Tony Blair, whose influence over the government grows by the day, has been bringing in groups of Labour MPs to warn them that if Reeves raises the big taxes in November 'it's over'. As one senior adviser says: 'The more you borrow, the less control you have over your destiny.'
How close are we, then, to 1976, when the UK was unable to service its debts and needed an IMF bailout? I think of Jim Callaghan speaking to the Labour conference that year: 'We used to think you could spend your way out of a recession… by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you, in all candour, that that option no longer exists.'
That isn't, yet, the speech that Starmer is planning. He intends to build on the spending review to chart a more optimistic year ahead, with waiting lists down, houses going up, and trade deals bringing better jobs, with a distinct community-first tone. The danger is that it sounds insufficiently confrontational, just when the markets are watching most closely. Downing Street is not complacent: one source talks of the difficulty of governing with an enfeebled state, one that is 'fat, not fit', a machine that seems 'too weak to lift a bin in Birmingham; to pick up the phone in a GP's office; to stop sewage flowing into rivers'.
This inheritance will take time to turn around. In the short term, there needs to be an urgent challenge to the party about its priorities, as well as self-congratulation about the things that have gone well. The Labour Growth Group's call for a 'National Renewal Compact', recently published online by the New Statesman, is a sign of the serious thinking about Britain's challenges being done on the back benches. Mark McVitie, Lola McEvoy and Chris Curtis argue that Britain is facing a 'revolutionary moment'. The language is stark.
Inside government, there is no longer an assumption that both Starmer and Reeves will survive. Angela Rayner, while the most obvious successor, is said not to want the top job for personal reasons. She is regarded as loyal to Starmer. Others doubt this. 'She always gives the impression of someone who does want the top job; she is very important, very political,' says another minister. If, to use Boris Johnson's phrase, the ball came loose from the scrum, we would probably see some kind of alliance between Wes Streeting, Bridget Phillipson and perhaps Shabana Mahmood – Mahmood representing the most right-of-centre, state-sceptical part of the party. The only other name being mentioned is John Healey, the Defence Secretary, seen as the safest hands in the administration, and a man who could Callaghan-style calm markets and backbenches alike.
So, finally, we return to this oddest of prime ministers. His disdain for ordinary politics, his lack of real conversation with colleagues, and his arm's-length relationship with a commentariat are also a kind of strength which we have not perhaps taken seriously enough. He has the hide of a rhinoceros.
Starmer doesn't, to switch jungle metaphors, give a monkey's about most of the criticism. He can listen – and he is refreshing Downing Street, importing badly needed experience of governing. Pat McFadden is likely to be given, I'm told, an enhanced political role at the centre. The former Blair-era spinner Tim Allan has been approached as communications supremo.
The fundamental question, however, is about the real state of the country. Plenty of ministers believe we are on the edge of something pretty grim. As the summer stretches on, there is a general sense that the state is losing control of the streets – and Nigel Farage is watching, with one nicotine-tinted finger on the national pulse.
The Prime Minister does not think the country is broken, and from the City to the universities, from science to new technology, there is plenty to celebrate. Calm and resilience are great political strengths. But we are living through a social and economic Dunkirk. Business as usual won't cut it.
[See also: Kemi Badenoch isn't working]
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