You can’t trust Keir Starmer – he is the master of inconsistencies
In these biological fact-defying times, there is a simple test you can use to find out if a politician has a spine or not. Just ask them whether a woman can have a penis. Those able to give you a straight answer – whatever it may be – fall into the vertebrate category, while those who skirt around the issue (pardon the pun) appear not only ridiculous, but also gutless.
In addressing Scottish Labour’s annual conference in Edinburgh last week and apparently failing to mention the trans issue that brought down SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon, Sir Keir Starmer once again proved himself to be the star of Westminster’s own Diary of A Wimpy Kid.
He then doubled down on his lily liveredness on Thursday by unveiling “five missions for transforming Britain”, which contained only scarce references to immigration being a current problem. Incidentally, the public considers it to be the third most important issue facing the country after the economy and health, according to Yougov. But the Labour leader, who was shadow immigration minister from 2015 to 2016, cannot bring himself to provide answers to the migrant crisis.
Having delivered an address of breathtaking banality in Manchester, and producing a document calling on the Government to be “more agile, empowering and catalytic” (what?), Starmer’s conversion into a jargonspewing political chatbot is now complete. Some 3,500 words later and we are still no closer to finding out what Labour’s Keirbot stands for.
If you were expecting fully formed policy ideas, you got wonkish talk of “frameworks” and “compasses”, as he wallowed in Britain’s problems without providing answers beyond meaningless soundbites about the UK needing to “be on the start line” and “harnessing ingenuity”.
But that might well be the plan. Yes, it might be an intelligent ruse to bore us to sleep, such that we are distracted from this rather important question: why does Starmer keep changing his mind on things? Why is he so inconsistent – not just with the electorate or journalists, but even with his own members? “Captain Crasheroonie Snoozefest,” as Boris Johnson dubbed him, is probably a better nickname than “Sir Flipflop”.
Allow me to give you a couple of examples. In 2019, Starmer joined the howls of Labour outrage over stripping Shamima Begum of her citizenship, criticising Sajid Javid for making the “wrong decision”. This week, however, he completely changed his tune, declaring that the Special Immigration Appeals Commission was right to refuse the Islamic State bride’s appeal against being stripped of her British passport. Quite literally, his judgment on this singular issue has changed from “wrong decision” to “right decision”.
Then there’s his “son of a toolmaker” upbringing. On Tuesday, Starmer, from north London, claimed that farming is in his “DNA”, and that he grew up in a “rural farming community”. But it turned out he was raised in a town just 20 miles outside central London. Not quite a latter day Mr Mcgregor, then. Just who is this Islington lawyer trying to fool?
The mother of all inconsistencies was revealed on Thursday on Radio 4. After boasting about refusing Jeremy Corbyn the right to stand as a Labour candidate at the next general election, he was asked by the Today programme’s Amol Rajan: “If he’s not fit to represent Labour, what does it say about you and your judgment that you spent years advocating for him to be prime minister?”
Starmer’s response was as cynical as it was disingenuous. “Every single member of the Labour Party campaigned for a Labour government at the next election,” he said. Is that right? I seem to remember some honourable members leaving the party because they couldn’t in good conscience campaign for him – given that his controversial views on Israel, the IRA and nuclear disarmament had long positioned him as a Leftie headbanger on the fringes of politics.
Indeed, some Labour MPS even resigned from the party over antisemitism, while others refused to take a seat in the shadow cabinet. Starmer, meanwhile, willingly played a frontline role in the campaign to propel Jeremy Corbyn to the top of the British government. That is something we must never forget.
In the “Five Missions for a Better Britain” speech, Starmer went on to repeat Blairite slogans including being “tough on crime, and tough on the causes of crime”. The big difference is that Blair’s pledges were costed, specific and ready to deliver – while Starmer’s, like Corbyn’s, are vague “ambitions” that speak messianically about “a shared vision” without giving any clarity on how any of it would actually work in practice.
The term “mission” is casually used as cover for some quite extreme ideas. When he speaks about turning Britain into a “clean energy superpower”, read: a crackdown on reliable fuels that will add hundreds to energy bills. When he says he wants to “fix the Brexit deal”, and “reset our relationship with the EU”, read: capitulate entirely to Brussels.
We have already heard David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, call for closer co-operation with Europe across security, trade and foreign policy. He is a former arch-remainer who arrogantly assumes that no one can remember the dozens of times he tried to frustrate the Brexit process. But not even Lammy frustrated the process as much as Starmer, then the shadow Brexit secretary. It was Starmer who said in November 2018, more than two years after one of the largest democratic exercises in this nation’s history: “Brexit can be stopped.” Opening the door to a second referendum, he told Sky News: “All options must be on the table including the option of a public vote.” Nevertheless, we are now meant to believe that this man is the rightful custodian of Brexit.
This is all part of the “short memory syndrome” which has become rather common on the Left. The Guardian recently caused outrage by downplaying Corbyn’s role in the anti-semitism crisis that hammered the Labour Party under his leadership.
Praising his “formidable record fighting against racism and in speaking up for many persecuted peoples”, its editorial went on to suggest that “erasing the dark marks of the recent past should not mean disavowing everything that happened between 2015 and 2020”.
But as prominent Jews pointed out in a series of letters, published in the newspaper on Wednesday, Corbyn was suspended from the party in 2020 after the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) found that Labour had been responsible for unlawful harassment and discrimination under his leadership, a report he then said was “dramatically overstated for political reasons”. This wasn’t some cuddly grandpa advocating “gentler, kinder politics”, but a leader who failed to tackle hatred that was allowed to fester in his organisation.
Starmer deserves credit for cleaning up Labour’s appalling record on this issue. It is no longer a party condemned by the EHRC. But he cannot escape the fact that he sat on the shadow front bench for five years and watched it happen. A more courageous politician would admit to that being a mistake.
Until he does so, nobody should have to stomach another 3,500-word drone-athon from this incredibly uninspiring politician.
From his support for Jeremy Corbyn to his efforts to block Brexit, the Labour leader won’t be allowed to simply wish away his past