Six weeks ago, I was in a small venue in North London when the satirical comedian Mark Thomas commented on the election that Rishi Sunak had just announced a few hours earlier.
“Never has the prospect of Tory annihilation been greeted with so little excitement.”
This has now duly happened with the Conservatives losing over 250 seats and Labour’s new prime minister Sir Keir Starmer gaining a majority to match that of his fellow barrister, Tony Blair in 1997. Given the chaotic tenures of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, catastrophe was not a hard prediction to make and obviously in clear contrast to Blair, excitement is not a word associated with Starmer.
What makes Thomas’s words interesting is that at 61 years old, he is the same age as Starmer and some years ago, was known on television for entertaining, often anarchic, political pranks and protests at events like arms trade fairs, making him exactly the sort of left-wing activist who Keir Starmer as a young barrister garnered a reputation for defending.
After explaining his confidence in the imminence of Tory annihilation. Thomas devoted most of his enjoyable performance to attacking the various right-wing policies and stances adopted by the Labour party under Starmer’s leadership.
Nearly all Labour’s blunders during the campaign can be traced to the ruthless way in which Starmer’s leadership pivoted Labour rightwards. Infamously, Starmer has had to apologise for what he calls his ‘clumsy’ reference to deporting illegal migrants from Bangladesh. While the apology seems sincere, he would not have got in this position if Labour had not been competing in, rather than attacking, the race to the bottom of anti-migrant rhetoric stirred up by the populist/far right.
Clumsy could also be used to describe the words Starmer used in a radio interview last year which associated him with hawkish pro-Israel rhetoric. Some might say this reputation is unfair as the new Labour Foreign Secretary David Lammy has called for an ‘immediate ceasefire’ in Gaza and the party is committed to the principle of recognising Palestinian statehood, but it is sticking. A sounder basis for this reputation comes from the fact that after harshly disassociating itself from former leader Jeremy Corbyn, the leadership used spurious claims to purge some activists associated with Corbyn, including some Jewish left wingers who were critics of Israel.
Labour lost five traditionally safe seats this election to independent candidates standing on explicitly pro-Gaza platforms. One of them was Jeremy Corbyn, who having been an incumbent MP for 41 years, already had a strong local base of support. The other four successful pro-Gaza independents were standing in areas with higher-than-average levels of Muslim populations, relying on a nationwide drop in votes being cast for Labour by some but not all Muslim and left-wing voters.
Overall, this trend was not big enough to deprive Labour of many seats, though it did cost it votes even within Starmer’s own constituency. Independent and single-issue MPs rarely succeed at more than one election as the record of George Galloway shows, so the public is usually less likely to vote for them. Labour lost more votes by many of its traditional voters staying at home.
Alienating core supporters has been a running theme. A reported decision not to expend greater resources in opposing Nigel Farage, was presumably deemed strategic but is hardly in line with the values of most members. Starmer himself has quoted approvingly the words of the 1960s Labour prime minister Harold Wilson, who declared “the Labour party is a moral crusade, or it is nothing." A maxim his governments pursued whilst laying down the heart of the UK’s various modern equal pay, anti-discrimination and equalities legislation.
Reticence in opposing Farage whilst being seen to (unsuccessfully) nudge the country’s first Black woman MP, Diane Abbott towards resigning was therefore far from smart optics. As if this were not enough JK Rowling, in the past a seven-figure donor to Labour, now seems permanently estranged from the party thanks to largely online but highly toxic debates about trans issues.
The swiftness with which Starmer has proceeded from campaigning to running cabinet meetings suggests some such concerns may recede. Potentially more damaging - aside from the challenge of picking the right economic policies – is an over centralised party hierarchy ignoring credible local candidates, or worse as in the case of Faiza Shaheen in Chingford deselecting them at the last minute, which cost Labour a guaranteed gain from the Conservatives on the London/Essex borders.
None of these blunders cost Labour its “loveless landslide.” Starmer’s victory was underwritten by a historically high level of anti-Tory tactical voting across southern England, which accounts for most of the Lib Dems record 72 seats, compared to only 11 in 2019. Labour was given an added boost by Reform pulling the rug from under the Tory vote and the SNP in Scotland copying the Conservative’s appetite for self-destruction.
As the only “Tory annihilation” either Thomas or Starmer personally experienced was Tony Blair’s landslide, it is telling that even someone like Thomas who protested many of Blair’s policies, associates him with more “excitement” than Starmer. In part, this is structural due to the UK’s economic position being in a much weaker state than three decades ago. The challenges it faces are huge at a time when public confidence in politicians is low.
It also reflects personal differences. Blair’s charisma and knack for oratory is rooted in a privileged upbringing and education. Starmer’s upbringing was relatively humble which has motivated him to be hard working and ambitious. While both qualified as barristers, Blair unlike Starmer, was set on becoming an MP from his twenties and did not climb all the ranks of the legal profession.
Starmer on the other hand had two distinct and highly successful careers – first as a well-regarded human rights lawyer and then as Director of Public Prosecutions which earned him his knighthood - before the age of 52 when he first became an MP in 2015. His calm but dull public speaking style reflects skills he would have found helpful in the upper echelons of appellate courts.
Crowds certainly hung on Blair’s oratory and ability to convey emotion, but senior judges tend to dislike grandstanding and prefer dry factual arguments. Unlike in many dramas, top advocates are sometimes happy to simply rely on their strongest single piece of evidence and let their opponent do most of the talking.
Not interrupting while your enemy is making a mistake has enabled Starmer to etch his name in political history, less than five years after a historic defeat.
Whether he can help stem and reverse the dysfunction and corruption that has exacerbated inequality and social division in the UK, remains to be seen. It is clearly going to need more than the timid policy making for which Starmer has become known.
Optimists can put their faith in a serious leader for serious times, everyone else must be content with enjoying the damp British summer and a break from Tory chaos.
