Make or Break Time

Keir Starmer did well at Prime Minister's Questions this Wednesday lunch time. He asked searching questions about the "uncontrolled" removal of Covid restrictions, about projections of infection numbers and hospitalisations. He made suggestions about the next steps, and raised the likely danger of new mutations of the disease. Taking his cue from thousands of Twitter users, he accused the Prime Minister of leaving the door open for the "Johnson variant". Good stuff that won plaudits from the Labour leader's centrist media fans and yes, it was welcome. It's not a good thing that the government are bent on a psychopathic course, and challenging their reckless necropolitical startegy is the minimum one would expect from a competent opposition leader. The pity is Keir wasn't making these sorts of criticisms over a year ago.

On the cusp of the fourth wave, the sad and unpalatable truth is the Labour leader is partly culpable for the dangerous situation we find ourselves in. The warning signs were there from the off, with Keir treading carefully around the government's tardy efforts and treating it like a management exercise as opposed to a political challenge. And from there things haven't picked up much. As his defenders have argued, he didn't have much choice to go softly-softly at the beginning of his leadership. With life abruptly, unexpectedly thrown into abeyance and people clinging to government against an unknown enemy, a mood of national unity was in the air. The Tories were posting ridiculous poll leads, and the public at large weren't tuned in to what politicians other than the government were saying. Had Keir gone hard on the Tories, so goes the argument, he would have looked like he was scoring points as people were succumbing by the thousands. The Tories knew this and took advantage.

Timing is everything in politics. Unfortunately, Keir wasn't watching the clock. Stressing measured opposition was probably the right move initially. What wasn't was interpreting 'constructive' as 'keeping shtum'. In the dying days of his tenure, Jeremy Corbyn tempered his criticisms with suggestions and demands. Despite trailing in the polls by a wide margin and a dead man walking in conventional political terms, the government adopted these policies in part or in whole. As the party of working people with a direct link to the front line against the pandemic, when he took over he could have carried on where his predecessor left off. Keir had an opportunity to speak up for those who were up against it. But he didn't. When criticisms did issue from the Labour leader's lips, they were spreadsheet criticisms. They didn't take the Tories to task for slow action, nor the scandal in the care homes which was well known as it was happening, nor the outright corruption of PPE procurement. The politics weren't contested, there was no alternative plan, nor a vision about how life might be after the pandemic had receded. Instead, Keir Starmer insisted on road maps out of lockdowns and an "expectation" that children be back at school come September. He couldn't even muster a criticism of Eat Out to Help Out.

But as long as the polls were steadily but perceptibly moving in Labour's direction, there was no pressure on the leadership to change course. The plan, as much as one existed, wasn't to contest anything and let the Tories own their mistakes. Points of intervention were necessary to demonstrate Labour was on the side of public opinion, but there was no effort to show leadership. And so in the autumn after scientists started sounding the infections alarm, it was only then Keir came out for a short lock down to stymie transmission, which the Tories reluctantly followed through with. Likewise, when holiday hunger came to public prominence Labour only got on board after Marcus Rashford put in the hard yards. As for the incoherencies of the Tory tier system, Keir absented himself and it fell to others to offer opposition and leadership. As such, saying very little about the management of the crisis left Labour in a vulnerable position. Because the Tories defined it, they determined what failure and success was. And so when the polls began to swing back towards the Tories, coincident with but not entirely reducible to the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn, Labour had little to fall back on. Keir refused to make the link between Tory recklessness and deaths, ceding the ground to the cultivated Tory view infection was a matter of rotten luck. Worse, because he hadn't bothered articulating a political critique, an alternative plan, and a way out when he did attack Johnson it came across as carping and hindsightism - so reported the party's red wall focus groups.

And so the scene was set for our present malaise. Johnson took the credit for the vaccines and their rollout, and with little to say and politically foolish right wing opportunism, the poll numbers kept tumbling. While the Tories enjoyed a so-called vaccine bounce, it did not explain why Keir's numbers were heading south. What did was a refusal to oppose and an active effort at demobilising Labour's existing coalition of voters. And so his authority bled away. The goodwill built up in the first half of his leadership went with it.

Ordinarily, and especially under the terms politics has conducted itself these last 40 years, Keir Starmer would be finished. 323 votes from the good people of Batley and Spen was all that stood between him and the end of his leadership. But he has got lucky. Unlike Gordon Brown and Theresa May, who were finished long before they left office, the fates present Keir with an opportunity. What might save him and revive Labour's fortunes is how he handles life after 19th July. Attacking the government for lifting restrictions, plans to charge for tests, the mounting numbers of hospitalisations, the stats for persistent long Covid, images of crammed public transport, and cases of retail bosses mandating mask removal for customer-facing workers, every single instance is a Tory failure and a demand Labour goes on the attack. A recent poll suggests the public back the removal of remaining restrictions on the 19th, this hides the complexity of anxietes and worries simmering beneath the surface and it could rapidly change as Covid cases surge. The moment requires Keir Starmer ventures out of his wonkish, managerial comfort zone into political leadership.

Already, Wednesday's PMQs has established at least a willingness to move on it among the opinion forming elite and politics watchers, which has duly been relayed by the main media outlets. But this is his last, best hope. He can turn around his year of inaction on Covid by sticking up for those at the sharp end, save his leadership, and put Labour back on track for 2023/24. There are never any guarantees in politics, but persistent criticism informed by the everyday difficulties of trying to navigate the health crisis safely will, in all likelihood, be rewarded. If he fluffs it and doesn't keep hammering the Tories on this, then others will. Keir has seen what has happened when he plays politics by the rules set by the Tories. He is in a position where a pushback can change them to their disadvantage. It's make or break time.

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