One Abysmal Year of Keir

A full year since Labour returned to the mean and elected a man in a nice suit. Looking back at the occasion, this blog met Keir Starmer's election with a bouquet of scepticism. The power grabs and rolling back of internal democracy, a default to the bourgeois common sense of politics, a load of dishonest but politically convenient hand wringing over antisemitism - despite the leak of that report. As I wrote of the left's relationship to the new leadership, "We're going to have to live with someone whose first instinct is to praise the government when they're doing well, and keep quiet when they're not." Prepared? What I was expecting was a leadership not unlike Ed Miliband's, something that at least meant well which the majority of the left could support at a remove. Unfortunately, Dear Keir is yet to touch even this low bar.

In policy terms, he writes in Sunday's Observer about the failings of the Conservatives, and how Labour's "ambition for Britain must match the moment. Not merely fiddling with tax incentives or creating pots of money for towns to scrap over but creating an economy that works for everyone." One might point out this is exactly how Keir has spent his time in the Leader's chair. Attacking the Tories from the right over the minutiae of corporation tax rates, quibbling with the process and details of Coronavirus management, and only going on the offensive when either Marcus Rashford or teaching unions or SAGE have prepared the ground for him, this falls somewhat short of a functioning and effective opposition, let alone anything demonstrating ambition capable of rising to the occasion.

But I'm nothing if not fair, so let us consider some of the arguments in Keir's defence we haven't looked at already. For PoliticsHome, Adam Payne quotes an anonymous (of course) "senior party source" saying the party was in a terrible state when Keir inherited it. The party was near to bankruptcy too, so the story goes. There might have been a time when a journo might have challenged claims made by their interlocutor, but this wasn't one of them. At the end of 2019, the party's statement of accounts published under Keir's leadership show that following the election the party had a tiny surplus. Under previous leaders the party routinely got into multi-million pound debt holes. Another lie then. But there is some truth to the notion Labour wasn't in tip-top shape. The campaign itself was poorly coordinated, and organisation from region down to branch level were riddled with accumulations of dysfunctions. What else might one expect when the Labour right stretched every sinew in their scorched earth struggle against the leadership?

The other argument in the leader's defence, it is said, is something Keir can't do a great deal about. With the pandemic clogging the headlines and everyone's horizon depressed by it, the punters aren't especially interested in what politicians have to say - particularly when they're not in government and have no bearing on the management of the crisis. To all intents and purposes, Labour are whistling in the wind and we're going to have to wait until Coronavirus had faded into the background before the party's offer is noticed. Therefore, coming out with bold policy statements or making loud oppositional noises is a waste of time or looks like point scoring. The moment for a vision for government is ... not yet. Now, this is pretty unconvncing for a couple of reasons. Contrary to what our PLP and shadcab whisperers think, Keir Starmer has had plenty of coverage. And nearly all of it has been soft and supportive. If Keir isn't getting noticed, it's because he's not using these plentiful avenues to say anything memorable or meaningful. Second, it appears Keir's anonymous outriders can only conceive of opposition in two ways, as either shouty and ranty or as "constructive", which always means giving the government a free pass save some minor aspects of policy and positioning. There was a third way, which any assessment of Keir's record needs reminding of, and that's what Jeremy Corbyn accomplished in the dead duck days of his leadership. Contrary to the invented histories circulating for factional advantage, not only was he ahead of the government in calling for proper quarantine strategies, he was constructive because he offered policy solutions to problems, which the Tories promptly took up. This is something Keir has steered clear away from, apart from a ritualistic request that the government extend the Job Retention Scheme or carry on the measly uplift to Universal Credit.

Since his first day in the job, the openings have been there for Keir to carry on in the same vein, but he didn't. Why? One might put it down to a personal failing but in fact it has everything to do with his politics. Despite being weak on opposition, Keir is the most authoritarian (though certainly not authoritative) leader Labour has had since Tony Blair. His politics, such as they are, depend on affirming state authority and particularly government as not just the key but the only institution for getting things done. Keir's opposition to Boris Johnson, when it has manifested, has not gone for the jugular nor offered different ways of doing things because that might undermine the government's authority by creating an alternative to it. Even though he would be this counterpoint, Keir's strategy depends on the restoration and protection of state authority. Talking about policy and attacking the Tories on big picture stuff, or even his reticence to mention scores of thousands of dead, is an attempt to oppose while preserving the authority he seeks to draw on if he enters Number 10. In practice this means anemia. He has let the Tories define the Covid-19 crisis, and as such they're setting about defining the peace. Clever clever games leading to stupid stupid outcomes.

In terms of conventional politics, he's failing. But much more serious than poor parliamentary footsy is the potentially existential crisis the leadership and its right wing cheerleaders are dragging the party into. As this blog has pointed out enough, the main consequence of Jeremy Corbyn's time was the recomposition of the Labour vote. The core Labour supporter is now the immaterial worker, someone whose working life is bounded by the production of care, knowledge, and social relationships - typically, though not exclusively, for the profit of others. On top of this, the way Tory policy works to keep their voter coalition together by shielding older people, retirees particularly, from the (private) consequences of austerity, the fall out of the Brexit mess and the Covid slump, keeping the property market overheated and, indeed, subordinating crisis management to these ends, the Tories are underwriting the long-term decline of their support by raising a generation of anti-Tory voters. Jeremy Corbyn's clear anti-austerity message in 2017, plus the promise of a softer Brexit was able to cohere these emerging interests around Labour while keeping enough of the old core vote on board. As a new political consciousness in the process of emergence, there was a certain softnesss to it but, more importantly, conditionality. For it to solidify and identify with Labour the party needed to act consistently in their interests. Instead, there was more internal warfare and the stoking of Brexit - purposely by the right, including a certain Keir Starmer - as a wedge issue. The result was confusion, a panicky arse covering adoption of the second referendum, and a partial fragmentation of the 2017 coalition as a few hundred thousand defected direct to the Tories, and some two million migrated to the Liberal Democrats, Greens, the nationalist parties, and abstentionism.

The inescapable task of Labour strategy is bringing these people back, holding on to the new core that stuck with Labour in 2019, peeling soft supporters off the Tories, and looking at ways of energising the spontaneously socially liberal and small s socialist layers of younger workers. This is not just crucial for winning elections, but for securing the future of the party itself. According to the wisdom revealed by Claire Ainsley, Keir's policy guru and writer of matters on the new working class, this is what has to be done ... but thinks traditionalist appeals to flags and family would secure them. We have then an explanation for the plastic patriotism and similar embarrassing efforts, but from a position utterly ignorant of the relationship between the materiality of immaterial labour, social liberalism, and the constitution of new class identities. If this wasnt bad enough, something the dim wattage of Labourist thought should recognise - bread and butter issues, and how the Tories stymie them at every turn - is completely off the Starmerist radar too. It's almost as if they're not serious about power.

It gets worse. The loudest cheers for Keir come from the right of the party frothing at the purge of the left. Though, of course, they like to pretend it's a struggle against antisemitism, not least because they lack the arguments to contest the left at the level of ideas and strategy. As was pointed out last June, the problem with driving out the left, whether by adopting right wing positions or by simple diktat, is the party is ridding itself of the very people who were crucial to mobilising voters at the last two general elections. I'm not talking about campaigning, but those who did the unseen and under-the-radar work of converting friends, workmates, and family members into giving Labour a go. Those who, completely unbidden, were an influence in their online and offline networks and helped cohere support around the party. As dreadful as the 2019 result was, there's a reason why, bar 2017, Labour got the highest number of votes it had since 2001 and the greatest number of votes in England since 1997. In other words, Keir Starmer and his host are demobilising the party's support. Now, they might believe they can do a simple trade: putting the backs up of the new core vote in the big cities where Labour MPs sit on huge supermajorities doesn't matter if tacking right wins back support in the so-called Red Wall and soft Tories elsewhere. Completely forgetting immaterial workers are distributed across the land. Winning back the Brexit-supporting Tory switcher snack bar manager at a provincial railway station isn't worth it if the party does so on a prospectus alienating the younger, low paid precarious workers she oversees. Chasing after Tory supporters on a Tory-lite platform is less a matter of digging your own hole, but driving the spade into one's foot.

This is why Keir Starmer is doing abysmally. He's waging class politics alright, the class politics of the other side. As he waxes about our once-in-a-generation opportunity, the possibility of the party carrying on wanes that little bit more. "Starmerism" and its trajectory doesn't just risk Labour becoming less than the sum of its parts, but allowing it to fall apart completely. The polls have consistently shown upticks in Green support and faltering gains for the LibDems. The SNP are poised to sweep all before it, and Plaid Cyrmu is putting in a better showing. And thanks to the worst possible start to the Hartlepool by-election, a new party has a shout of coming from nowhere to take more support off Labour than the Tories. Might Keir be able to turn it around? Possibly, but in politics as with most things the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour. He managed to repair Labour's polling position before crashing it, and having disaggregated the party's support he's not about to put it together again without a fundamental strategic rethink. Though, of course, having an impotent and useless party at a remove from the messy business of proper politics suits the Tories and the Labour right alike.

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