Starmer’s biggest struggle is with the party he leads
WHY DO I feel sorry for Labour leader, Keir Starmer of “take the knee” fame? Answer: For the same reason that I often felt a twinge of sympathy for the best of Labour’s 14 leaders since 1945.
Clement Attlee ran an historic reforming Government in spite of itself. Similarly, Harold Wilson’s great feat was to hold his administrations together.
Hugh Gaitskell had to contend with the CND movement and early Europhilia and Neil Kinnock did at least put Militant to flight for a time.
I draw a veil over the rest, including Jim Callaghan who got his comeuppance in the Winter of Discontent of 1979 for scuppering Barbara Castle’s courageous attempt 10 years earlier to complement trade union power with responsibility.
The Tories are the very devil to lead, too, but by and large things don’t get serious until they think they are going to lose the next election. For the Left, what matters much more is the class war with Labour’s paymasters – the unions – usually leading it.
Responsible Labour leadership has to contend every day with the party’s tendency to fight, including itself, rather than build the new Jerusalem. It must seem at times as if you are a circus bareback rider with two steeds determined to go their own way.
Worse still, Labour has a reputation in office for damaging, if not ruining, the economy. Starmer may be able to live down Gordon Brown’s 2010 budget deficit of £153bn in view of the Tories’ current vast spending to cope with coronavirus. But it will not be easy to put the utter profligacy of Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto to flight.
He might have found it easier had he ditched Corbynistas such as Shadow Education Secretary, Rebecca LongBailey, from the Opposition front bench. But her retention speaks volumes for his perceived need to accommodate conflicting factions.
Latterly, things have got worse in an increasingly dangerous world with Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at large, the Middle East as ever its combustible self, Europe in turmoil and Britain suffering from a brainstorm brought on by political correctness.
It is no exaggeration to say that if wiser heads do not prevail in and beyond Westminster that George Orwell’s 1984 will be upon us complete with thought police.
Every institution these days seems to be suckers for punishment by singleissue pressure groups who reckon they only have to shout and the walls of Jericho will come tumbling down.
If you doubt that look at the 300 or so Labour local authorities, including the pathetic Labour Mayor of London, reviewing their monuments for racial offence at the behest of the Black Lives Matter movement when all lives matter under our laws.
This latest manifestation of militant political correctness is another challenge to Starmer because, however peaceful individual protest movements intend to be, they are exploited by Corbyn’s violently militant totalitarian hard Left.
This is not the Britain envisaged by Labour’s pioneers who were primarily concerned about the emancipation of the labouring classes. The fact that in this land of manifest opportunity they have largely succeeded seems to count for nothing with the ideological militants.
As if that were not enough on Starmer’s plate, we have the teaching unions claiming victory because the Government is dithering over whether schools will be back by September.
Many will ask what kind of movement can harbour a profession that rejoices in closed schools. How will that benefit the younger generation, many of them victims of broken homes or absent fathers?
It is certainly not best calculated to revive an economy crying out for skills and get youngsters into secure jobs. We must also seriously question what has happened to university education when it can produce so many students fervent in support of the whole gamut of minority causes and apparently tolerant of far-Left or far-Right violence that latches on to their demos.
Boris Johnson will, of course, ultimately carry the can – or reap the credit – for handling the current crisis.
But Keir Starmer cannot count on succeeding him if Boris only partially succeeds in repairing the damage wreaked by coronavirus.
There are too many unanswered questions about the modern Labour Party as a Government-in-waiting to give him even a fighting chance of walking into No 10.
He needs to eliminate a host of contradictions, return his party to mainstream politics, condemn violence outright, root out anti-Semitism – indeed, racial tension – control the unions and convince the public he can build a prosperous economy.
That’s all. He has my profound sympathies.
Responsible Labour leadership has to contend every day with the party’s tendency to fight, including itself, rather than build the new Jerusalem.