Eighteen months really is a long time in politics.
Yesterday I was clearing out some papers and came across a copy of the New Statesman from 12 July 2024. It was their post-election issue. I flicked through it and was astonished by the hubris of some of the columns, and how wrong many of their pundits proved to be. There were, however, a couple of exceptions.
Ed Docx’s column was headlined BEYOND THE WALL: KEIR STARMER COULD BE A GREAT PRIME MINISTER – IF HE CAN ONLY BREAK THROUGH THE BARRIER OF HIS OWN RESERVE.
I’m not sure Sir Keir was ever going to be a great prime ministers. Technocratic managerialists rarely are, but Dovx was bang on about his reserve. Starmer appeared to be a man for the times. On the face of it a man of total probity, straightforward and the antithesis of Johnsonian ‘flash harryness’. And then came ‘Freebiegate’, which ruined everything. Overnight, he turned from Mr Straight into Mr Dodgy and, not for the last time, the voters wondered if they had been sold a pup. It turned out that he appeared to be as bad as those wicked Tories had been.
It’s not only Starmer’s timidity and reserve that has done for him. It’s the fact that he’s an empty vessel. He believes in nothing, apart from himself, and even that is something that I increasingly doubt. The only conviction he seems to have is that constantly flip-flopping is a winning electoral and governing strategy. Yet another one came along yesterday, when he withdrew the Chagos Bill. That makes at least 14 serious U-turns. There is no vision. There is no belief. There is no signpost to the sunlit uplands. But then again, would his putative challenger, Andy Burnham, be any better? He certainly has the self-belief, but does anyone know what he really believes in, policy-wise? A joke doing the rounds at the moment goes: “A Brownite, a Marxist, a Corbynite and a Blairite walk into a bar. ‘Hello Andy,’ shouts the barman.” I well remember the 2015 leadership campaign hustings I hosted, when Andy Burnham fizzled out like a damp firework.
The article from the post-election issue of the New Statesman that has stood the test of time was by Katie Stallard and headlined WHY THE STARMER ERA WILL BE DEFINED BY FOREIGN AFFAIRS. Having attracted the headline of ‘Never Here Keir’, he’s certainly had his challenges, not least dealing with Donald Trump. Up until recently his policy of positive engagement with the presidential manchild appeared to have reaped dividends, but some believe it was always destined to end in disappointment. Yes, his words this weekend reacting to Trump’s outrageous comments about NATO servicemen in Afghanistan reflected the horror of the nation, but they were in stark contrast to the disgraceful measures contained in the Northern Ireland Veterans Bill. Labour MPs were cheering on the Prime Minister for standing up to Trump and speaking our for veterans and their families, yet this week they voted through measures which will see brave service personnel in Northern Ireland pursued through the courts by ambulance chasing human rights lawyers.
Another article in that issue of the NS was by Hannah Barnes, which bore the headline WE IN BRITAIN ARE FORTUNATE THAT THE TRANSFER OF POWER IS SO CALM AND DIGNIFIED. Up to a point, Lord Copper. Why do I say that? Because the transfer of power from one party to another is illusory. Everyone knows it is the civil service that actually wields the power. Few new cabinet ministers have any idea of how to pull the levers of government to effect real change. And so the machine grinds on inexorably, leaving voters with the impression that there has been very little change at all. As Orwell might say, they look from man to beast and struggle to tell the difference. Wasn’t it ever thus?
