‘FOR MANY PEOPLE, KEIR STARMER WILL BE THE MORE ACCEPTABLE LEADER FOR LABOUR’
Chief reporter Martin Shipton assesses the task facing Keir Starmer as he takes over the leadership of the Labour Party in an unprecedented situation
SIR Keir Starmer has taken over the leadership of the Labour Party at the most challenging possible time.
A few months ago Labour suffered its biggest General Election defeat since 1935 – a fact that itself has provided him with a low base from which to launch a potentially winning strategy in the short term.
But the coronavirus has introduced an unprecedented new dimension into the equation.
As opposition leader he will be expected to tread a tightrope between supporting efforts to combat the crisis while simultaneously holding the Government to account.
There are those who argue that this creates an almost impossible task for him.
When opposition parties have to line up behind the Government at a time of national crisis, they effectively neutralise themselves and skewer their chances of offering themselves as an alternative administration, according to this view.
There is, of course, a strong historical precedent that runs counter to this. In 1945 Labour swept to a landslide General Election victory despite its leaders having served in Tory Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s wartime Cabinet.
The post-war Labour government went on to establish the NHS among other reforms. Voters had disregarded victory in the war and punished the Conservatives for their mishandling of the economy in the 1930s.
Today’s coronavirus crisis could, paradoxically, provide Labour with an opportunity to return to government in circumstances that the party would never wish for, and that would be painfully tragic.
There is increasing concern about the way the UK Government has handled the crisis – that Boris Johnson was too laid back at the start, that the ill-advised “herd immunity” approach allowed unnecessary infections to occur, that insufficient testing has taken place and that health workers have been left without proper protection.
If people come to believe that more people have died than need have done, and if the UK Government gets the blame, Mr Johnson’s party’s currently stellar poll ratings of up to 54% will swiftly decline.
At that point, a credible opposition leader could come into their own.
For most people, Sir Keir Starmer will be seen as a significantly more acceptable Labour leader than Jeremy Corbyn. That’s hardly saying much – Mr Corbyn’s approval ratings hit record lows, with a large majority failing to see him as a potential occupant of 10 Downing Street.
Sir Keir is a very different figure. He has the advantage of being seen as a moderate by many ordinary members of the public, while having a track record from his days as a human rights lawyer that appeals to the social justice instincts of most Labour members. Having entered Parliament as recently as 2015, he’s never been in government, and therefore doesn’t carry the kind of albatross that has compromised would-be Labour leaders in the past, like voting for the Iraq war.
In a Corbyn-led Shadow Cabinet over-burdened with mediocre politicians, he stood out as someone who performed his role as Shadow Brexit Secretary tenaciously. Always clear that it was in the UK’s economic interest to remain in the EU, and if not then in the single market, he showed true leadership in the way Mr Corbyn, with his fence-sitting, could not.
During the leadership election, Sir Keir’s team was able to fend off illinformed criticisms from the Corbyn continuity camp that he was a right winger.
They only had to point to his record as a lawyer over many years to show that the kind of causes he had espoused were entirely in line with traditional Labour values.
A video released in support of his leadership campaign outlined his human rights work and carried the voices of some of those he had helped.
In the 1980s he was present in the crowd when police charged peaceful pickets outside Rupert Murdoch’s controversial printing plant at Wapping, he represented the families of striking dockers who had their benefits cut off, he gave free legal advice to poll tax protestors in Trafalgar Square and he represented the mineworkers’ union when it sued the Tory government for failing to provide transitional relief for unemployed miners.
He backed protesters who opposed the widening of the M3 and the destruction of downland, together with Greenpeace he challenged Shell’s plans to sink an environmentally damaging oil platform in the North Sea, he defended two environmental activists when they were sued for libel by McDonald’s after exposing bad practice, and he represented protesters against a US secret surveillance complex in England.
In 2003 he published a legal opinion that invading Iraq would be unlawful and he took the last Labour government to court over its decision to deny welfare benefits to asylum seekers.
Subsequently, after his appointment as Director of Public Prosecutions, he prosecuted MPs who cheated on their expenses and changed prosecution guidelines on violence against women.
Supporters point to his running of the Crown Prosecution Service, with 8,000 employees, as evidence of administrative competence – something that should normally be taken for granted, but, many argue, has been absent from the Labour Party in recent years.
The Daily Telegraph has already shifted its line of fire from Jeremy Corbyn to the new Labour leader, running a profile piece headlined “Keir Starmer: the high-flying law man desperate to stress his working class credentials”.
Unlike the former Telegraph journalist now occupying 10 Downing Street, Sir Keir did not go to Eton, but to Reigate Grammar School, a state school that converted into a fee-paying school while he was there. His father was a factory worker and his mother an NHS nurse.
While in normal times, Labour’s seat deficit to the Tories might be seen as too high to overcome in one election, the current crisis makes many things conceivable.
The impression made on voters by Sir Keir Starmer in coming months will be crucial.