National Post (National Edition)
O'Toole and Starmer: two peas in a pod
Erin O’Toole and Keir Starmer are two politicians holding similar jobs who are coming at a shared challenge from different directions.
O’Toole is the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Starmer replaced Jeremy Corbyn at the top of the United Kingdom’s Labour party in April. Of the two, Starmer may have the more daunting task, given that the man he replaced was arguably the worst leader the party ever had, judging by either public standing or election results.
Corbyn was an obscure, fringe figure who was fiercely attached to socialist credos he formed as a youth and which changed little over time, until he was flukishly elevated to head the party in 2015. Four years later, he led it to its worst drubbing in 80 years, surrendering seats long considered Labour bedrock. In October, he was suspended from the party in the wake of a devastating report on his handling of allegations of anti-Semitism in his own ranks.
O’Toole faces nothing so shameful as that. His predecessor, Andrew Scheer, may have seemed awkward and uninspiring to many, but he managed to draw more votes than Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberals, thus reducing the government to a minority after one disappointing term.
They are not altogether different, the two of them, despite being separated by an ocean and a significant divide in their political views. Both were raised in smaller communities: O’Toole in Bowmanville, Ont.; Starmer in Oxted, a commuter town outside London. O’Toole’s father spent his career with General Motors; Starmer’s was a toolmaker who worked long shifts and was a distant figure in his life. They got their politics from their parents: Starmer was named after Keir Hardie, founder of the Labour party; O’Toole’s father served in the Ontario legislature.
O’Toole lost his mother when he was nine; Starmer’s mother spent decades battling Still’s disease, a painful and debilitating illness that had her often confined to hospital. Both became lawyers who worked in the private sector. O’Toole also enjoyed a lengthy military career; Starmer was made head of the Crown prosecution service and director of public prosecutions. For that, he was named knight commander of the Order of the Bath (he is officially Sir Keir Starmer, a title he doesn’t likely flaunt a lot while touring the union halls).
Both were chosen because they were seen as more likable, accessible and marketable than what came before. The task is to broaden their base of their support by drawing in voters who didn’t like what they saw, or don’t view party principles as aligning with their own. To succeed, they have to convince voters that the party isn’t entirely what they thought, while introducing changes that will allow them to make that claim with a degree of honesty.
O’Toole has drawn considerable attention for his efforts so far, particularly recent remarks he made on free markets and organized labour, part of a brash effort to win union members to the Conservative camp. “Middle-class Canada has been betrayed by the elites,” he said in a Canadian Club address, adding that, “Too much power is in the hands of corporate and financial elites who have been only too happy to outsource jobs abroad.” Private-sector union membership is “an essential part
of the balance between what was good for business and what was good for employees,” he said, but is in danger of disappearing.
Union bosses aren’t buying it at the moment and pundits are largely scratching their heads. How does he hope to align his union push with core Tory positions on free trade and open markets? One noted that in trying not to sound like the Liberals, he’s in danger of sounding like a New Democrat. In support of that view are suggestions in the Toronto Star that O’Toole’s union push is a fine idea. On the other hand, conservative forces in Britain and the United States have made significant inroads in blue-collar support, so why should Canadians be different?
Starmer, oddly, has a similar problem, though in his case he needs to convince Britons he’s not in thrall to the hardline union leftists who backed Corbyn. His charge that the anti-Semitism report represented a “day of shame” for Labour and his support for his predecessor’s suspension has him pitted against union bosses and Corbyn loyalists seeking to reverse the move through legal action.
“When people don’t vote for you, you don’t look at them and say, ‘you’re wrong.’ We need to look at ourselves rather than the electorate,” Starmer told the BBC, arguing that the party’s future depends on a different approach.
O’Toole can certainly agree with that. Every Conservative boss who tries to edge the party towards a more centrist agenda is accused of being “Liberal lite.” O’Toole might have been among them before he became leader, when he was identifying himself as a “true blue Tory” who could mingle comfortably with the party’s social conservative wing. The question of which is the real O’Toole may become a key variable in his success as leader.
In London, Starmer raises comparable questions. He acknowledges his youthful enthusiasm for the comfortable certainties of hard-left dogma, keen on nationalizing anything that moved and enamoured with socialism’s die-hard heroes. Experience has moderated him, he says. Whether his party wants to be moderated is another matter. Less than a year into his leadership, his control “is on a knife edge,” according to the BBC.
O’Toole’s post isn’t so precarious. But both men confront a shared prospect. They lead parties that would have difficulty getting elected on past positions. Both need change. Yet it’s not clear yet how much room either has to bring it about.
THE TASK IS TO BROADEN THEIR BASE OF THEIR SUPPORT.