Pressure on Starmer
The Labour Party is at a crossroads with members more divided than ever over what it must stand for
The name of George Lansbury will ring a bell with only the keenest students of politics but it could, one day, be replaced by that of Sir Keir Starmer in the official history of the Labour Party.
It was Lansbury who, in 1935, became the last Labour leader to step down without fighting a general election, a fate that could yet befall Sir Keir if he cannot turn around his party’s fortunes – and fast.
While talk of an imminent leadership challenge currently belongs on the fringes of the Labour Party, the possibility that he could be replaced before the next general election is a matter of open discussion on the Opposition benches.
“He’s got about a year to demonstrate that he can turn things around,” said one Labour MP. “Otherwise, the party will increasingly start to look for someone who can inspire the public in a way that, so far, he has failed to do.”
Sir Keir promised to “carry the can” for Labour’s defeat in the Hartlepool by-election, and he has no excuses after parachuting in a candidate manifestly unsuited to the task.
Hartlepool voted Leave by nearly 70 per cent and the selection by Sir Keir’s office of Paul Williams, a Remainer who lost his seat as the MP for nearby Stockton South at the last election, suggests the leadership is “tone deaf when it comes to the North”, according to Jon Trickett, the Labour MP for Hemsworth in West Yorkshire.
Sir Keir believed that as Dr Williams, a GP, had NHS credentials that would triumph over Brexit. That proved to be a disastrous miscalculation.
Mr Trickett said that “too often [the leadership] give the impression of occupying a north London bubble” – the same bubble that produced Jeremy Corbyn and Ed Miliband.
Thirteen months after taking over from Mr Corbyn, Sir Keir has not only failed to close the gap on the Tories in the polls, he has gone backwards. Lord Mandelson’s old seat (which once came with a 17,508-vote majority) was flipped into a Tory safe seat overnight, while Sir Keir’s personal ratings have slumped to a new low.
It leaves him – and Labour – at a crossroads as the party ponders what it must do over the next three years to achieve what no one else has succeeded in doing before: overturn an 80-seat majority at a stroke.
Asked what Labour would have to do to win the next election, one veteran backbencher laughed, saying: “We are not going to win the next general election. We haven’t even got across to voters what it is that we oppose, never mind what we stand for.
“Jeremy Corbyn led us to the worst defeat since 1935 so it would take something special to reverse that in one leap, which no one expects.
“The question is, do we allow Sir Keir to fight the election and then maybe replace him, or do we replace him before then?”
Bookmaker Coral yesterday dramatically cut the odds on Starmer being replaced this year from 5-1 to 3-1, with Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, the 7-1 favourite to take over.
Sir Keir’s most loyal supporters argue that Covid has obliterated normal politics for the entirety of his tenure and that only when the fog lifts will the way ahead become clear.
His critics – who come from every wing of the party – are less forgiving, pointing out that Labour has failed to land a significant blow on the Tories as the UK suffered both the worst virus death toll in Europe and the biggest financial hit, not to mention the words “Barnard Castle” or “Marcus Rashford”.
“He is fighting the wrong battles,” said one Left-wing Labour MP. “He went into these elections banging on about Tory sleaze and Downing Street wallpaper but that hasn’t cut through with voters.
“Tory sleaze was something that happened 25 years ago. It means nothing to young voters, a lot of whom weren’t even born then.
“It also suggests he thinks the Tories we are fighting now are the same as the Tories we were fighting back then and, I’m afraid, that’s just not the case. The world has moved on.”
The result in Hartlepool was not just a rejection of Labour’s attack lines but, far more worryingly for Sir Keir, a wholesale rejection of Labour’s current values, of which voters in the North East remain suspicious.
The choice of a Remainer candidate suggests Starmer has not even begun to understand that for many workingclass voters patriotism, sovereignty, law and order and immigration control are fundamental tenets.
Hartlepool has 59 per cent more working-age military veterans per capita than the average in England. For them, Queen and country are worth dying for and they will not quickly forget Mr Corbyn’s refusal to sing the National Anthem, his sympathies for terrorists or Emily Thornberry’s sneering at the flag of St George.
Labour’s research department told Sir Keir in February to “use the flag [and] veterans” to reconnect with voters, showing that almost a year into the job he had not managed to work
‘We haven’t even got across to the voters what it is that we oppose, never mind what we stand for’
this out for himself, let alone prove he is prepared to fight for Britain and British values in the way that Mr Johnson unquestionably does.
While the people of Hartlepool believe in Britain, Labour remains ensnared in an endless culture war that demonises the country.
Sir Keir posted pictures of himself on social media taking a knee for George Floyd last year but Johnson point-blank refused to do so, saying he believed in “substance” rather than “gestures” and commissioned a report on race and ethnic disparities.
When Tony Sewell, the Brixtonborn son of Jamaican immigrants, concluded in that report in March that Britain was not institutionally racist,
Left-wing activists mobilised en masse to put the boot into the report, its author, and their own country.
Getting Brexit done means the Tory party has moved on from its decadeslong internal struggle, while Labour is perhaps more divided than ever.
A significant proportion of its younger supporters – and its union backers – still believe in Corbynism, and want the party to move further to the Left, while for moderates it remains too metropolitan and detached from its base. If Starmer cannot find a way to bring these two disparate groups together there is the very real risk for him of a breakaway party being formed.
Add to that the fact that Mr Johnson has had to turn the Tories into a high-spending, big-state party during Covid, and Labour has little ground left to occupy.
Voters in Hartlepool taking in the extraordinary election result yesterday attributed it in part to the success of the vaccine rollout – which appeared to have trumped all other issues – but also the personalities involved.
Pat, who is retired and in her 60s, said the Tories had “done a good job” with vaccines, before adding: “I like Boris – I think he’s brilliant. And there’s something about Keir Starmer I don’t like.”
Quite why Mr Johnson, an Old Etonian, has a knack of connecting with working-class voters that evades Sir Keir, a toolmaker’s son named after Labour’s founding father, will be the subject of student dissertations for years to come.
Sir Keir must find the answer to that particular riddle and shake off his “bland leading the bland” tag if he wants to make inroads before the next election and, put bluntly, keep his job.
“We are in a situation where Boris Johnson is seen as an insurgent by the voters, even though he is the Prime Minister, and Keir Starmer is seen as part of the establishment,” said a Labour MP from the moderate wing of the party.
“To convince people to switch sides you need to show them you will bring about change but people see Keir as representing ‘steady as you go’. It’s not enough. Whatever else you say about Boris Johnson, he is someone who makes things happen, whether it’s Brexit or the vaccine rollout.”
Chris Hopkins, associate director of the polling firm Savanta Comres, has tracked both men’s progress over the past year. He said: “One of the problems for Starmer is that he still has a really big ‘don’t know’ figure when people are asked their opinion of him. The public see him as intelligent but bland, whereas they see Boris, for all his faults, as authentic.
“He also hasn’t done enough to show that Labour is completely different now than it was under Jeremy Corbyn. A lot of people think it is still the party of Corbyn, just with a different face.”
Chris Bryant, the former shadow culture secretary, said: “There have been three ‘longs’ in these elections – long Covid, long Brexit and long Corbyn ... what has been clear on the doorsteps is that the Corbyn factor still hasn’t died. It would take St George to completely slay that dragon.”
Sir Keir promised to rebuild the so-called “red wall” of northern Labour constituencies that was demolished by the Tories in 2019 but the uncomfortable truth gnawing away at his team is that there is no guarantee Labour voters will return once their loyalty has cracked.
The Tories have already done the hardest part – persuading Labourvoting families to vote Tory for the first time – and those voters will now need to be given a reason to switch back.
Ben Houchen, the Conservative Tees Valley mayor since 2017, paved the way for the Hartlepool by-election result by imbuing the region with a sense of optimism and aspiration after decades of industrial decline.
One voter, aged in his 50s, said: “Let’s face it: a change is something happening. We’ve got the Tees port opening up. This bloke who is the new mayor for the area, he’s opened up Teesside airport and there’s work coming into the area. The other people have just been talking about it.”
Mr Hopkins said: “Those new Conservative voters going to the polls this week, or in 2024, will be asking themselves ‘why should I vote differently?’ and Labour needs to give them the answer.
“So far, they haven’t set out a credible alternative plan for government, they seem to be just waiting for the Tories to make mistakes, when what the public want is positive campaigning.”
By far the majority of Labour MPS feel that Starmer needs to be given more time.
“His first test was to rid the party of anti-semitism and to take control of the party again, and he passed that test with flying colours,” said one.
“His next job is to get across to the public, once and for all, exactly what we do not stand for, making a clean break with the recent past, and then use the next couple of years to explain what we do stand for. Until we can see exactly what shape the country is in, post-covid, it won’t be completely clear what the priorities need to be.”
Cynics would point out that Sir Keir was supposed to have done that with his party conference speech last September, and even had a second go at it with his “A New Chapter For Britain” speech in February, neither of which succeeded in defining his leadership or indeed delivering a single memorable policy.
Since George Lansbury was forced to stand down because of his pacifism in the face of Nazi aggression in the 1930s, Labour has won only eight of the 22 general elections contested, of which three were won by Tony Blair.
Mr Blair was successful because he convinced voters that he represented change, and a fresh start for the country. Sir Keir must convince his own party that he, too, can represent change if he is to avoid the same fate as Lansbury.
‘The public see Sir Keir as intelligent but bland, whereas they see Boris, for all his faults, as authentic’