Starmer ‘shamefully slow’ in issuing a response, says minister

He is caught between the patriotic voters he needs to win back, and the hardleft elitists in his party

SIR KEIR STARMER’S response to the blockading of newspaper print plants by environmental protesters was “sadly and shamefully slow”, the Culture Secretary said last night.

Oliver Dowden said Sir Keir’s delay in responding allowed Left-wing Labour MPS to express support for Extinction

Rebellion activists. The Labour leader put out a statement yesterday morning condemning the actions, 36 hours after nearly 200 activists blocked roads outside major printing works in Herts and Liverpool.

The presses print The Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, along

with The Sun and The Times. Deliveries to readers on Saturday morning were severely affected as a result. In his statement, Sir Keir said: “The free Press is the cornerstone of democracy. Denying people the chance to read what they choose is wrong and does nothing to tackle climate change.”

Labour sources said Sir Keir did not comment on Saturday because he was on a visit to north Wales and was happy to let Jo Stevens, the shadow Culture

Secretary, lead the party’s response.

But before he issued his statement yesterday, Diane Abbott, the former shadow home secretary, compared the activists’ action to the Suffragettes.

Dawn Butler, a Labour MP, described the blockade as “excellent work” in a since-deleted message on Twitter.

In a Daily Telegraph article today, Mr Dowden wrote: “As ever for the modern Left, the facts take second place to virtue signalling and platform denying.

“I would have hoped for better from Sir Keir Starmer but sadly and shamefully he was slow to condemn the protesters’ actions, whilst Labour MPS offered support for the protesters.”

Other Conservatives were also critical of Sir Keir. Amanda Milling, the party’s co-chairman, who attends Cabinet, added: “He now needs to stand up to his own party and say clearly: this attack on jobs and freedom is not acceptable.”

Paul Bristow, MP for Peterborough, said: “Anyone with any sense is appalled by what Extinction Rebellion have done. A free Press is essential for democracy.”

The pages of The Daily Telegraph are not known for their excessive sympathy for the leader of the Labour Party. But listening to the MPS led by Sir Keir Starmer, it is difficult not to feel a pang of pity for the man seeking to become our next prime minister.

Since he took over his party in April, Starmer’s political strategy has been clear. He wants to move on from the worst elements of the Jeremy Corbyn years, from the amateurishness of the leader’s office to the anti-semitism scandals. He wants to push Labour towards moderation, while avoiding a civil war with the now sizeable and influential Left of his party. He wants to avoid making significant policy commitments, and attack the Government’s competence instead.

Above all, Starmer knows he must shut down dividing lines with the Tories on cultural issues. He knows it was Brexit, and Labour’s resistance to it, that caused the so-called Red Wall of constituencies to fall to the Conservatives last December. And he knows that Britain’s future relationship with the European Union, and other powerful political issues relating to identity and culture, can still slice in two the coalition of voters he needs to win.

Labour are more metropolitan, more cosmopolitan, and more culturally liberal than ever before. But the voters they have lost, and need to win back, are different: provincial, patriotic, and seeking solidarity from their fellow citizens. This explains why Sir Keir is desperate to keep framing the country’s political choice as one about competence and economics. He can feasibly build a coalition of voters by promising to tax the rich and spend more on services, but his job will be impossible if he appears to want to go back on Brexit, increase immigration, or put the rights of criminal suspects above those of the general public.

Yet politics is rarely so simple, and no politician, however skilful, can quell the brewing culture war. Political divides on economic issues will of course remain, but divides on cultural issues are also here to stay. This is because, on one hand, cultural conservatives seek respite from incessant change and exposure to the harsh winds of globalisation. On the other, left-wing activists seek ever more radical change, and are increasingly prepared to rely not on the ballot box but disruptive and even violent direct action.

And so, as Trotsky might have said, Sir Keir may not be interested in the culture war, but the culture war is interested in him. He will be unable to escape it.

Just consider the events of the past few days. On Friday, Extinction Rebellion, the anarchists posing as environmentalists, successfully blockaded newspaper printing presses, preventing their circulation to millions of readers. It took Starmer until Sunday lunchtime to comment, when he was eventually forced to issue a statement saying the blockade was “wrong and does nothing to tackle climate change”.

While Labour insists Sir Keir was simply unavailable, it seems more likely that the true cause of the delay was the same dilemma he will face time and again for the duration of his leadership.

The many millions of moderate voters he wants to target deplore criminal behaviour and disruptive direct action. Yet many politicians and activists in the modern Labour Party support it.

“Bravo, Extinction Rebellion, excellent work,” tweeted Dawn Butler, a Labour MP, on Saturday morning. Another, Zarah Sultana, justified the criminal action on the basis that several newspapers “campaign for Right-wing policies.” Diane Abbott, until recently the shadow home secretary, compared Extinction Rebellion with the Suffragettes, who, lest we forget, fought not against democracy, but in its favour.

And Sir Keir’s dilemma does not end there. In June, the Labour leader posed for photographs as he “took the knee” in solidarity with Black Lives Matter. It was already known that the official Black Lives Matter campaign sought to “defund” the police, and supported an anti-semitic boycott of Israel, which it calls an “apartheid state”. Only later did Sir Keir make clear that he believes defunding the police is “nonsense”, and when he did so the Left attacked him.

Other examples abound. When Priti Patel dared to cite her own experiences of racism, Labour MPS wrote to the Home Secretary accusing her of using her own ethnicity to belittle “the very real racism faced by black people”. Even though the letter was perceived by Ms Patel to be racist, and one of the signatories was a member of Labour’s front bench team, Sir Keir chose to remain silent.

He remained silent, too, as the dinghies crossing the English Channel caused a new wave of illegal immigration this summer. While the public wanted control, Labour MPS demanded open borders, calling for “an immigration system that advances the rights of all working people [and doesn’t] divide us by the colour of our passports”.

Starmer remained silent as the Black Lives Matter protests turned violent on the streets of London, although he spoke up later when Right-wing extremists did the same. He intervened in the Rule, Britannia row only when the BBC announced it would be played at the Last Night of the Proms after all, and even then felt he had to say the song “should not be a barrier to examining our past”.

Consider the beliefs of the MPS he leads, and one can understand why Sir Keir has concluded silence is the best policy. Opinion research suggests only one in five voters believe Labour is more patriotic than the Conservatives, and even fewer believe Sir Keir is more patriotic than Boris Johnson.

But perpetual silence is not an option for Labour. Sir Keir can do everything he can to keep the public thinking about the competence of the Government, and the economic choices facing the country. But thanks in part to the actions of Labour’s own MPS and activists, Britain’s cultural divide will come to the fore again and again. The dilemma facing Sir Keir means he will be unable to provide a voice for both his party and the voters he needs to become prime minister.

Nick Timothy is the author of ‘Remaking One Nation: The Future of Conservatism’