Johnson's 'culture war' trap seems designed for Corbyn, not Starmer
Boris Johnson appeared to have had his say about the Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests earlier this week, telling the nation in a carefully phrased article for the black newspaper the Voice: “I hear you.”
Yet on Friday morning, he dramatically returned to the fray, tweeting that taking down controversial statues was to “lie about our history” and warning would-be protesters: “The only responsible course of action is to stay away.”
With a BLM march planned for London on Saturday already cancelled amid fears of clashes with far-right protesters, there was little obvious need for the prime minister to wade in – but the inveterate campaigners in No 10 love nothing better than to troll the liberal left.
Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s chief adviser, generally believes the metropolitan commentariat are at odds with the majority of voters – in particular, many of those the Conservatives won over in December’s general election. As with Brexit, so with statue wars.
Johnson’s policy chief, Munira Mirza, is a longtime critic of multiculturalism, and of policies and approaches that measure their success by their impact on individual ethnic groups – what she called, in a 2006 article, the “race relations industry”.
Johnson also has a particular sentimental attachment to Winston Churchill, on whom he wrote a biography and on whose likeness protesters daubed graffiti last week.
So for tactical, political and even personal reasons, this battle is one No 10 is very happy to rejoin – not least on a day when official data showed economic activity had fallen off a cliff.
The potential flaw in this approach is that Keir Starmer is not Jeremy Corbyn. Throughout recent days, Johnson has sought to draw a sharp dividing line, and put Labour on the other side of it – alongside the “thugs” disfiguring statues, and po-faced killjoys censoring the TV archives.
With Brexit in the most part resolved as an issue, Conservatives hope “culture war” issues such as these will serve a similar function, by severing the two parts of Labour’s electoral coalition – dividing its “red wall” voters from its liberal city strongholds.
Yet Starmer has so far not allowed himself to be corralled.
Labour has made specific, practical demands on race inequality. Starmer has called for the findings of the Windrush review to be enacted, as well as David Lammy’s report into the experiences of BAME people in the justice system. (The latter seems particularly unlikely, since Mirza said at the time it could do “more harm than good”.)
The Labour leader was photographed taking the knee in his spacious House of Commons office alongside his deputy, Angela Rayner – and supported police officers who felt moved to do the same. But he has also criticised the behaviour of the crowd in Bristol who toppled the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston. Starmer told LBC it was “completely wrong” for it to come down in that way, though also said it should have been taken down years ago.
His shadow home secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds, also criticised the disorderly way the statue came down and made a point of asking the home secretary, Priti Patel, about the welfare of police officers injured in the protests in London.
Some leftwing Labour MPs were unhappy about what they saw as equivocation – and the strength of feeling was underlined by a letter signed by more than 30 MPs accusing Patel of
“gaslighting” for highlighting her experiences of racism.
But with voters apparently willing to give Starmer a hearing – judging by a Mori poll on Friday showing he had the most positive approval ratings for an opposition leader since Tony Blair – it may be more difficult than the Tories hope to pigeonhole his party.
Not only has Starmer chosen his words with care; he has continued to focus the majority of his fire on the government’s performance in tackling the Covid-19 crisis.
Deborah Mattinson, of the political consultancy Britain Thinks, who is writing a book about the red wall, says “culture war” questions are barely registering with many voters, at a time when they are overwhelmingly concerned with the pandemic.
She says Johnson may have misjudged the moment, if he is hoping to use this febrile time to trap Starmer: “One of the really interesting things, on this and some other issues, is that Boris
Johnson is really struggling adapting to not having Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader.”