The Repeated Surrender to Tory Framing

In the 18 months prior to the 1997 general election, Labour was often criticised from the left for being overly cautious. This gently-does-it was encapsulated best by the Blair-Brown pledge to stick with Conservative spending plans for the first two years of government. The idea was to settle any jitters so-called Middle England (the right wing press) might have about New Labour, while taking the sting out of any attacks the Tories might launch. As the self-identified party of economic competence, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown wanted to annex this Tory asset and neutralise it. By this time, with Labour enjoying similar poll leads as the party does today it was probably moot. But it was understandable. Economic concerns torpedoed the 1992 general election for Labour, and so nothing was left to chance. Accepting these plans came with a price. It allowed the Tories to litter the Treasury with land mines that Blair and Brown then promised to tread on. The most explosive of which was cutting social security support for single parents, a political trap designed to force Labour to attack some of the most vulnerable women for point scoring purposes. And true to their word, the new government saw the attack through.

In other areas, however, New Labour was not so reticent. Though its programme didn't offer a qualitative change in the sense of breaking with the pro-market, neoliberal consensus established by Thatcher and bedded down by Major, a combination of rhetorically vicious attacks on the Tories, some good-sounding lines (tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime; education, education, education), a set of very modest pledges that at least gestured toward a fairer society, riding the tide of hope, and the baleful record of the Tories themselves ensured Labour scored a crushing victory.

Nearly 30 years on, and it seems the lessons learned by Keir Starmer from this period is to abandon the field of politics altogether. Or, to put it another way, accept Tory framing as sacrosanct on everything. The dishonest attacks by the likes of Grant Shapps that accuse Labour of being the political wing of Just Stop Oil are taken seriously by just one man: the Leader of the Opposition. Blair and Brown capitulated on economics but retained some autonomy on other political matters. Starmer, however, has surrendered across the board. North Sea exploration must be honoured, so the Tories gleefully issue scores of new licences while Starmer attacks Just Stop Oil as "contemptible". The Tories have their stop the boats/Rwanda scheme, and in their race to the gutter they want to use unsafe barges - redolent of 19th century prison hulks - to detain asylum seekers. This finds no opposition from Starmer, who says Labour will keep them too for as long as there's a backlog. And on the NHS, having thoroughly marketised it the Tories are busily defunding medicine and health to create a two-tier service. To this all Labour manages is a shrug, followed by a commitment to using private providers to plug the gaps the Tories have left. Despite it being a complete non-starter.

You could call this cowardly behaviour, but that lets Starmer and friends off the hook. They know an election win is virtually certain. You can look at the polls and note how Labour's double digit leads have been the norm for over a year now. The Tories have had their Black Wednesday moment. There's no chance of a John Major repeat, especially with Labour's huge support among working age people and a collapse in the Tory vote among the older/retired base. Blair's and Brown's caution on economics was well founded, as much as one might disagree with their take then. There is no such excuse now. Which ineluctably leads to one conclusion, that Starmer and co are not so much interested in power for a purpose as power in itself. His project, as correctly divined here many years ago, is interested only in restoring the authority of and modernising the state. It is an authoritarian project that puts state managers in the driving seat of politics, and anything that benefits people in general is a by-product of and not the objective of Starmerist policy. Without wanting to get too romantic about the history of the Labour Party, for them Labourism is about ministerial cars and briefcases. Not using the lever of policy to make life better or, with the looming catastrophe of climate change, dealing with serious and unavoidable problems.

This explains Starmer's willingness to accept Tory framings. There are no "tough choices" here, just a set of easy things to say that keeps the Tory media off their backs until they win the general election by default. And because they have accepted Tory framing, don't be surprised if Starmer is constantly steered by the front bench opposite as it gallops off further to the right. What a despicable position for the Labour Party to be in.

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