Cut Starmer some slack, three months hasn’t undone his victory
The Labour Party is having some teething issues, but three months is hardly enough to judge Starmer by, writes Will Cooling
For a party that won an astonishing landslide victory less than three months ago, the Labour Party is uneasy. Its senior ranks have been buffeted by arguments over the gifts they’ve received from donors and the pay they’ve offered to senior staff, whilst people on all sides of the political spectrum queue up to criticise the government’s decision to means-test pensioners’ winter fuel payment.
Amid all the squabbles it’s easy to forget that politics is currently caught in a moment of suspended animation as we await Rachel Reeve’s October budget. Whilst waiting three months to complete a spending review and develop measures to restore order to public spending does not sound excessive, five out of the last six changes in the party that leads the government have seen an emergency budget delivered the month immediately after the election. The additional wait has led to a sense that the government is drifting, with no plans to tackle the problems that they have inherited. That minister after minister had to stand up in Liverpool without anything much to say, due to them all still waiting to hear back about how much money they will have to spend, only gave credence to that criticism.
It is, however, important to remember that it has only been three months, of which one of them was taken up by a combination of urgent action to quell far-right rioting and ministerial holidays. Likewise, the odd schedule left by Rishi Sunak and Lord Cameron has meant that much of Sir Keir Starmer’s time has been spent abroad, as he has been thrown into several prearranged summits. And the lesson from Liz Truss’s rushed mini-budget is that it’s better to get things right, than to do them quickly. After all, we would all rather drift for a bit, than crash suddenly.
And Labour has been here before. Sir Keir Starmer’s first two party conferences as party leader were held under the shadow of a pandemic that had seen the party awkwardly flit between broadly supporting the government’s measures to constrain coronavirus and second-guessing specific details. As Boris Johnson basked in the credit for one of the world’s fastest rollouts of the vaccine, it looked like Labour was doomed to lose another election.
But a funny thing happened when politics finally unfroze as we put lockdowns and social distancing behind us; Tory barbs and Labour panic had obscured a political environment that had significantly moved towards Labour. People not only had been reminded about the importance of public services but had become distrustful of the Tory’s ability or willingness to deliver them to a high quality. There is no reason to believe that these fundamental strengths have disappeared, with the Tory Party seemingly poised to elect its most right-wing leader since the last one, with neither Robert Jenrick nor Kemi Badenoch having a plausible pitch to voters about how the Tories will rectify the mistakes of the past fourteen years.
As both Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves demonstrated in their speeches to party conference, it is only Labour that has even the concepts of a plan to meet people’s demand for better public services. Come the Budget they will finally give clarity about the taxes they intend to increase to fund day-to-day spending increases, and how they will use additional borrowing to invest in new infrastructure to secure greater growth.
The Labour government has not lost the next election during the past three months. Indeed, all opinion polls show them still comfortably in the lead. It is instead what happens in the three years following the Budget that will determine whether they succeed. In government, it’s actions not words, decisions not scandals, that matter.