Daily Mail

Don’t despair! There’s one good reason for Tory cheer: Sir Keir Starmer — aka Captain Crasheroon­ie Snoozefest

- Stephen Glover

MANY Tories have a hang- dog look at the moment. Whether supporters of Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak, they assume the Conservati­ve Party is heading for certain defeat in an election in two years’ time.

There is a lot of chatter in Tory circles about how divided parties never win elections. Miss Truss and Mr Sunak are said to be biting chunks out of each other in a destructiv­e‘ blue-on-blue’ internecin­e war.

Meanwhile, many Conservati­ves believe that the two leadership candidates are barely distinguis­hable in dullness from Sir Keir Starmer, recently described by Boris Johnson as ‘ a pointless plastic bollard’ and ‘Captain Crasheroon­ie Snoozefest’.

In particular, Liz Truss is said by some to be so wooden that she makes the Labour leader, previously celebrated for his capacity to send us all to sleep, appear witty, original and lively.

Is there any basis for these Tory fears? Not much. I grant that neither Liz Truss nor Rishi Sunak would have them rolling in the aisles down at the Alhambra, but that is not usually thought to be a disqualifi­cation in a political leader.

As for the charge that they are ‘ trashing the Tory brand’ by disagreein­g so vehemently in public, I submit that this is greatly exaggerate­d. Once the leadership contest is over, the disagreeme­nts will quickly fade and be soon forgotten.

Moreover, in policy terms the contestant­s are closer than is commonly believed. Even on taxation, their main bone of contention, less separates them now that Mr Sunak has embraced the cause of tax cuts by pledging to scrap VAT on energy bills for a year if he becomes PM.

No, the Tory pessimism is overdone. But there is actually an even bigger reason for downcast Conservati­ves to feel quietly optimistic. I am speaking of Sir Keir Starmer.

In the past few days, the Labour leader has burnished his reputation as a man with an aversion for producing interestin­g ideas. We have also been reminded how deeply divided the Labour Party is — more so than the Tories, as Miss Truss and Mr Sunak toss their firecracke­rs at each other.

SIR Keir’s two problems are connected. He is not a policy-free zone merely because he can’t make up his mind and doesn’t know what he believes. He is reluctant, or perhaps unable, to set out his stall partly because his party can’t easily agree about important policies.

Look at his muchherald­ed speech in Liverpool on Monday. In the cause of duty, I have read every word. It was a lament for the low economic growth experience­d by this country over the past decade. Liz Truss says much the same.

But whereas she proposes a remedy — lower tax — Sir Keir didn’t make a single suggestion. Oh, that’s not quite accurate. He did come up with the notion of a ‘ new industrial strategy council’ — a sort of superquang­o which would hold government to account.

That’s going to solve all our problems!

To be fair, he did enumerate ‘five principles that will guide my government in growing our economic contributi­on’. One of these was to be ‘distinctiv­ely British’. Another was to ‘re-energise communitie­s and spread economic power’. Who writes this rubbish?

Possibly Sir Keir will one day come out with something a little more specific. But it tells us a lot that, more than two years since becoming Labour leader, he is still producing low-grade political gunge.

Part of the reason, as I say, is that his party remains divided on key issues. Sir Keir may have largely seen off the hardLeft, comprising people such as Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, but he is still beset by some pretty extreme characters.

Whenever he half-heartedly embraces what might generously be described as a policy, these people are apt to jump down his throat. Yesterday morning, the pragmatic Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, appeared to rule out rail nationalis­ation on grounds of cost, and was later seemingly endorsed by her boss.

But several senior colleagues volubly disagreed. Louise Haigh, Shadow Transport Secretary, insisted that the party remained ‘committed to public ownership of rail’. Her comments were re-tweeted by Angela Rayner, Labour’s Deputy Leader, who evidently agrees.

The combative Ms Rayner, who has more than half an eye on Sir Keir Starmer’s job, happens to be in a relationsh­ip with Sam Tarry, a hard-Left senior Labour MP.

Yesterday, Mr Tarry turned up at a picket line at Euston station in London to show solidarity with the 40,000 RMT members who have shut down most of Britain’s rail network.

THIS was an act of defiance — outright rebellion, really — against Sir Keir, who had ordered his frontbench­ers not to join striking rail workers on picket lines. The Labour leader doesn’t want to give the impression his party supports the strike, though in his characteri­stically ambivalent way, he’s not against it either.

Last month, some 25 Labour MPs defied his instructio­ns not to join picket lines, including four members of the frontbench. Sir Keir failed to sack any of them.

Last night, he plucked up the courage to get rid of the mutinous Mr Tarry as a shadow transport minister. Not to have done so would have shown shameful weakness, and would have amounted to irrefutabl­e evidence that Sir Keir had lost control of his fractious party.

Despite the sacking of his truculent shadow minister, Labour remains divided. After the chaotic past few days, we still don’t know whether or not it favours the nationalis­ation of rail (or water or energy) companies. We also don’t know if it supports the rail strikes.

I am no fan of Tony Blair, but compare his performanc­e with Sir Keir Starmer’s. Between 1994 and his landslide victory in 1997, Blair stamped his authority over Labour, dumping Left- wing policies and moving the party to the Right.

Blair was persuasive, decisive and charismati­c. Starmer can’t persuade parts of his party to back him. He is often indecisive and incapable of formulatin­g appealing policies. And he is certainly not charismati­c.

My argument is not that the Labour leader won’t lead his party to victory. If nothing else, should the Tories win again in 2024, and govern for another five years, they would have been in office for 19 years. That may be too much for the electorate to stomach.

But it is surely undeniable that Sir Keir is a deficient leader who leads a party that isn’t uniting around him. He has failed to come up with convincing policies, and his party continues to tack to the Left.

Labour is undoubtedl­y glad to see the back of Boris Johnson, whom it regards as the most formidable Tory leader for a generation. Like Margaret Thatcher, he appealed to large swathes of the working class.

But if Liz Truss or Rishi Sunak — I assume it’ll be the former — turns out to be an effective and straightfo­rward Prime Minister during a severe economic crisis — why, the Tories could still triumph in two years’ time.

So stop the whingeing and defeatism! The leadership debate is not irredeemab­ly toxic. When the clouds have cleared, the Tories will face only Sir Keir Starmer and a divided Labour Party.

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