‘Nothing to Fear but Keir Himself’

Following his near-death experience last week, the Labour Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has, we are told, been reborn. A soft-left phoenix has risen from the ashes of the “boys’ club.” This is how Labour women (and many male MPs) describe the allegedly misogynistic clan of right-wing “Blairites” who have been cleared out of Number 10 and who had had a malign influence, they believe, over the Labour Party leader.

These “boys” include the departed chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, the defenestrated director of communications, Tim Allan, and of course the Prince of Darkness, Peter Mandelson, formerly Lord Mandelson, who has finally had a stake driven into his dark heart following revelations about his links to Jeffrey Epstein. Suddenly, Keir is free to be Keir, they say, pointing to his spirited seeing off of the abortive coup led by the Scottish Labour Party leader, Anas Sarwar, last Tuesday.

Sharon Graham, leader of Unite the Union, one of Labour’s largest donors, believes that the Labour “boys” had been promoting what she calls “neoliberal policies” and had poisoned the well. “It [the Labour government] delivered for the bond markets and once again for the bankers,” she declared in a speech last week, claiming that the Treasury under Labour had been mesmerized by “so-called fiscal rules…austerity by another name.” Had the boys’ club not been sent packing, Unite would, she threatened, have disaffiliated from Labour and taken its money elsewhere. (She did not specify where.)

Graham was expressing the overwhelming view of the Labour membership and most of the parliamentary Labour Party. This may seem divorced from reality: does she seriously think that this massively indebted country should ignore the bond markets, abandon fiscal discipline and borrow yet more money? Apparently she does. And most of the Labour Party appear to agree with her. 

You need only consult the recent Survation poll of Labour members on their favorite Cabinet ministers. This ministerial beauty contest was topped by the left-wing former Labour leader, Ed “Net Zero” Miliband, at 70 percent favorability. Starmer was at 5 percent. Labour has never learned to love its leader, despite his electoral success.

But, after the leadership crisis, the left now believe that they have captured (or rather recaptured) Starmer and can now bend him to their will. They point out that when Starmer was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2020 he stood on a platform stressing “the moral case for socialism”.

Keir Starmer even produced a Ten Point pledge card in 2020 promising to nationalize “rail, mail, energy, and water,” to abolish university tuition fees, to end “cruel” welfare provisions, to restore EU free movement, and to relax immigration controls. He even pledged to legislate a “Prevention of Military Intervention Act.”  One wonders how he would have squared that with his recent promise of boots on the ground in Ukraine.

Most of these radical postures were ditched within a year of Starmer winning the Labour leadership. The Ten Points became a left-wing meme, repeatedly reproduced on social media with most of the promises redacted.

Starmer abandoned Ten Points leftism under the guidance of Mandelson—who remained hugely influential in Number 10 until very recently—and of McSweeney, who pointed out that keeping the pledges would almost certainly lead to the loss of the next general election. Starmer’s predecessor as Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, had in 2019 taken Labour to its worst defeat since 1935 on a left platform not dissimilar to Starmer’s agenda.

McSweeney was right, of course. Labour won a landslide victory in July 2024 on a promise not to raise income tax, VAT, or National Insurance; a commitment to honor Brexit; plus a promise from Starmer that he would “stop the boats,” by which he meant the illegal migrant crossings across the English Channel. He would, he said, “smash the gangs.”

But that is all water under the bridge, if you will excuse the pun. The numbers crossing the Channel on small boats have actually increased under Labour. The party has defaulted to the democratic socialism which has always been its core philosophy. Labour went along with the McSweeney plan because they wanted to win a general election after 14 years in the electoral wilderness, not because they believed in it. The same thing happened in 1997 when Labour won an earlier landslide under Tony Blair after 18 years of Tory rule. Blair promised to govern as “New Labour”: a pro-business party of the center ground. This recognition of political reality rarely lasts. Blair is now excoriated by most Labour members and the commentariat on BlueSky.

So what happens now? If Labour is back under left-wing management, where is the government, and Britain, headed? The prognosis is not good. Starmer has sidelined his promise to deliver economic growth and has already pumped tens of billions into welfare. The restoration of the left-wing “activist state” implies much more interventionism, regulation, and growth-destroying taxes. A reaffirmation of net zero and carbon taxes will keep energy costs unsustainably high. 

But this new, improved Starmer is not so secure as his left-wing supporters claim.

For a start, the  Mandelson-Epstein scandal has a long way to run yet. The Cabinet Office is trawling through 25 years of Mandelson’s and other ministers’ contacts with Epstein going back to the Blair era. The Parliamentary Security and Intelligence Committee intends to publish many documents relating to the Epstein affair. The Metropolitan Police are conducting a criminal investigation and have already raided Mandelson’s homes.

Starmer is still the least popular prime minister in history according to recent polls. Labour faces a desperate fight in the Gorton and Denton by-election in a fortnight and, if he survives that, the expectation of huge Labour losses in the Scottish Parliament elections in May. The Starmer boosterism of the past few days, taken up by much of the press, defies electoral reality. He has gone beyond the point of no return.

This was revealed most forcefully in a magisterial article in the Spectator magazine last week by one of the most respected and well-connected journalists in Westminster, Tim Shipman, author of countless insider accounts of governmental crises. Shipman quotes numerous senior Labour sources bemoaning the incompetence of Starmer, who they believe has no political nous and lacks any sense of purpose.

“Fundamentally, the Prime Minister cannot make a decision, stick to a decision, implement a decision, defend that decision when it gets tough, or explain that decision, ever,” Shipman quotes a senior figure close to No. 10 as saying. Another says: “Letting Keir be Keir is unlikely to be the solution: it is the problem.” Or as one Westminster wit puts it: “We have nothing to fear but Keir himself.”