After four years as leader, simply not being a Tory doesn’t qualify the flip-flopping Sir Keir to run the country

KEIR Starmer became leader of the Labour Party four years ago on Thursday. rather a lot of political water has since flowed under the bridge.

When I interviewed him on BBC TV during the Labour leadership contest in 2020 his pitch was basically Corbynism without the ‘our friends in Hamas’ baggage. He stood for more taxes on the well-off, the nationalisation of royal Mail, energy and water companies, the banning of privatesector outsourcing in the NHS and the scrapping of university tuition fees.

These were not promises, he assured me, they were pledges. I didn’t really understand the difference but it didn’t matter. Whether a promise or a pledge, every single one was quickly junked.

The ideological reset did not stop there. Last summer the Left-leaning Financial Times assured its readers there was still some socialist metal in Starmer: there would be £28billion a year in state-funded investments for ‘green’ projects, a return to free movement with the European Union, the abolition of the House of Lords and ‘Bidenomics on steroids’ (huge rises in public spending and business subsidies). Most of that has since been ditched too.

It is clear, looking back four years, that Starmer was prepared to say whatever it took to become leader of the Labour Party. It is equally clear that he is now prepared to say whatever it takes to become Prime Minister – even if that means renouncing everything he said to be leader.

To lead the Labour Party he had to tilt to the Left. To lead the country he has to win back those red Wall voters who used to vote Labour but switched to the Tories in huge numbers in 2019. That means tilting to the right.

So he has draped himself in the Union flag, kicked off Labour conferences with the national anthem, promised (for what it’s worth) to be tougher than the Tories on immigration (not a high bar), found nice things to say about former Tory premier Margaret Thatcher, eschewed a general rise in taxation and committed himself to an economic policy of fiscal rectitude and spending prudence.

His ideological gymnastics, of course, have paid dividends. He is on track to win this year’s general election, probably by a landslide majority. But he has the Tories to thank for that rather than his own political perambulations.

It is often forgotten that just over a year into his party leadership he lost a by-election in what had been rock- solid Labour Hartlepool, with a 16 per cent swing to the Tories, plus hundreds of Labour seats in the May 2021 local elections.

Two months later, he narrowly avoided another by-election disaster at Labour-held Batley and Spen. The Tories were ten points ahead in the polls and Starmer’s job was on the line.

The Tories then proceeded to throw it all away. Then PM, Boris Johnson proved incapable of providing the reassuring, clear and consistent leadership the pandemic demanded but proved to be a dab hand at turning 10 Downing Street into the country’s Party Central while the rest of us were in lockdown.

The dissembling and shambles of the Johnson ascendancy paved the way for Tory self-destruction: in very short order the ruling party went through three Prime Ministers, five Chancellors, a run on sterling and government bonds, economic stagnation, record high taxes and state spending, a fierce squeeze on living standards and unprecedented levels of immigration.

A litany of failure in which the Tories abnegated all rights to running the country are the reason why a Labour landslide now beckons.

Not being a Tory is more than enough to make Starmer our next Prime Minister. It is nowhere near enough to equip him or his party to run the country.

It’s sometimes claimed that his relentless, opportunistic flip-flopping in opposition makes it hard to discern what he will do in power. But that is not quite true. We have a decent picture of the shape of a Starmer government. It is not a pretty sight.

He might have ditched the more obvious absurdities of Corbynista socialism but he has no idea what private enterprise needs to flourish or what makes a market economy tick.

Along with Shadow Chancellor rachel reeves, he stands for the dull dirigisme of British statism in which the primary purpose of business is to generate taxable wealth to finance Labour public spending. The private sector is only to be tolerated in so far as it’s in close partnership with – i.e. in thrall to – government.

Far from unleashing the animal spirits of business and entrepreneurs to generate some muchneeded economic growth, a Starmer government will expect private enterprise to march in tune with its aims and values, policed by an army of pro-Labour Whitehall bureaucrats.

Government will be active, omnipresent and intrusive, working through an array of new, grandly-titled state agencies: National Wealth Fund, Industrial Strategy Council, Infrastructure Council, souped- up Treasury Growth Unit and a green gimmick called Great British Energy.

Captains of industry will be in and out of government departments so often they will barely have time to run their own businesses.

The public sector will call the shots because that is the core of today’s Labour constituency. The party’s most loyal voters are metropolitan, middle- class, whitecollar, well-paid public sector bureaucrats with a vested interest in more public spending.

For the moment, in his preelection phase, Starmer is indicating that an inheritance of record high taxes, borrowing and spending will curb his ability to spend more. But once in power the pressure to spend more from the most numerous and powerful voices within the Labour tribe will prove irresistible.

From everything we know about Starmer he will succumb to it. After all, he is the quintessential public-sector bureaucrat. He has bent whatever way the situation demanded to become Labour leader and PM-in-waiting.

Why would he not bend in office to the public-sector lobby in his own party – the most powerful force in Labour?

After all, Starmer is more Ed Miliband Soft Left than Tony Blair New Labour. Neglecting private sector needs while pumping up the public sector will suit his general political outlook.

Inevitably, this means he will raise taxes and borrow a lot more than he will ever indicate before election day. The extra dosh will be sprayed across the public sector, to little effect (bar higher wages) because (unlike Tony Blair) Starmer has not shown the slightest inclination to reform public services to make sure more money is well spent.

That won’t change in government: his party is now dominated by people whose default position is to oppose public sector reform and to insist that all would be well if only more money was spent on public services (i.e. them).

The massed ranks of rookie Labour backbenchers, many inexperienced know-nothings new to politics but steeped in public-sector culture, will cheer that sentiment to the rafters. Starmer will not balk at it.

So public sector productivity will continue to decline. Taxes will rise but people will see little improvement in our dilapidated public services. The extra spending will keep interest rates higher than they would otherwise be.

All of this will inhibit the economic growth Labour claims to be its first priority. Opinion will quickly sour: I suspect a Labour government can expect to be pretty unpopular within months of taking power.

Don’t think for a moment this will be the Tory chance for a quick comeback. They will be too busy knocking lumps out of each other to exploit Labour unpopularity to any great extent.

The Tories won by enough in 2019 that it should have secured them ten years in power. They squandered that big time.

It is not clear they will quickly make themselves fit again for power in opposition.

Starmer is a lucky man. He doesn’t have a credible blueprint for power and his government could soon be on the wrong end of public opinion. But he will have the Tories as the main political force against him – and that will probably keep him in power for longer than he deserves.

Every pledge he made in 2020 has been junked

He will say whatever it takes to be PM, even if it means renouncing all he said to be Labour leader

He is more of an Ed Miliband than Tony Blair