What is the Point of Starmer’s Labour?

(Photo credit: Sky News)

Britain is facing manifold social and economic crises unlike anything seen in decades. The cost of living crisis fuelled by rising inflation and years of austerity is undermining the living standards of working class and lower middle-class people. Millions are facing fuel poverty in the coming months as energy bills skyrocket. The NHS is struggling to cope and thousands lack access to an NHS dentist. The Bank of England has forecast that the country is heading into recession. Trade unions across multiple sectors of the economy are preparing for strike action as their members face real terms pay cuts in the face of high inflation levels. There is even speculation about the need for blackouts in January. All the while, the government is paralysed as the Conservatives wait to elect their new Prime Minister.

 

The situation facing Britain after 12 years of Tory-led government is truly dire. While Labour’s former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has warned that Britain is facing a “winter of dire poverty” and has called for Parliament to be recalled and for there to be an emergency budget. Brown gave his endorsement (along with several charities, faith groups and organisations) to a report highlighting the impact of the cost of living crisis, and called for the government to “take immediate action to bridge the shortfall [in people’s incomes] and ensure families have enough to live.” His position and the report were endorsed by Labour’s sister party, the Co-operative Party, but curiously the Labour Leadership has (at the time of writing) yet to clearly endorse it, despite it being a leading news story. Even the Liberal Democrats have called for October’s expected rise in the energy price cap to be scrapped.

 

Labour has so far struggled to get a handle on the many social and economic crises and Keir Starmer was forced to U-turn on his initial opposition to allowing Labour frontbenches to join picket lines. Labour under Starmer has yet to consolidate a clear political identity and narrative for itself. It lacks a core mission and its concrete policy proposals have been few and far between. It is lacking the red meat of social democracy, at a time when it is desperately needed. All of this leads to the question as to what is the point of Starmer’s Labour?

 

The instant answer is to replace the Conservatives as the party of government. There can be no doubt that a Keir Starmer led government would be a significant improvement on the current Tory government and the two candidates vying to replace Boris Johnson. I personally hope for a Labour-led government after the next general election, preferably with some form of power-sharing agreement with the Lib Dems and the Greens, along with a commitment to introducing proportional representation. Britain is crying out for a progressive government.

 

But Labour needs to be careful. This is not the 1990s. In fact, politically the 2020s is likely to be much closer to the 1970s, and perhaps even the 1930s. Although Labour can point to the recent success with the Wakefield by-election, it has yet to pull ahead considerably in front of the Conservatives in the opinion polls. Starmer is not polling leads as consistently high as Ed Miliband was a decade ago, let alone Tony Blair in the 1990s. A poll last month found that 43% of Labour supporters did not know what Keir Starmer stood for. This is a problem Labour must address urgently.

 

Labour needs ideas, and radical big ideas at that. Ideas that will enthuse voters. Ideas that Labour has the courage to argue for and campaign for. It was therefore disheartening to see Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, appear to rule out a future Labour government supporting re-nationalisation. This follows Starmer’s previous rejection of universal basic income (UBI) during the pandemic.

 

Labour must not aim to become the last defenders of a failed consensus, bereft of ideas or a viable progressive alternative in the face of an immense crisis. This is what doomed the Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald in the late 1920s and early 1930s, as well as the Labour government of Harold Wilson and James Callaghan in the 1970s. In both instances, Labour was annihilated at the following general election and Britain had Conservative or Conservative dominated governments for over a decade.

 

It may sound like a contradiction, but in order to be pragmatic, Starmer’s Labour needs to be radical. There is nothing pragmatic about ruling out potential solutions to the cost of living crisis, something that public ownership or UBI could help to deliver. To rule something out based on pre-existing orthodoxy is the very nature of an ideological position. Labour must keep its policy options open. True pragmatism is not about bland banality, ruthless centrism or compromise for the sake of compromising, it is about proposing solutions to the problems of the day, often in the face of orthodox ideological certainties.

 

To get a flavour of what I mean, consider this quote from the Beveridge Report of the social liberal founder of the welfare state, William Beveridge; “A revolutionary moment in the world's history is a time for revolutions, not for patching”. This is a statement which is as radical as it is pragmatic. Beveridge was confronted by the giant social evils of the early 1940s, and he and his committee in the Beveridge Report of 1942, proposed a radical new model of social welfare provision in order to address them. Labour (and the Lib Dems) today, require both Beveridge’s radicalism and his willingness to disregard old certainties in the face of a historic social crisis.

 

So, what is the point of Starmer’s Labour? Inevitably, this shall be determined by events, most of which will be out of the Labour Party’s control. In fairness to Starmer, Britain is still more than two years away from a general election. However, it is already clear that the cost of living crisis, along with the many other crises that Britain faces, will be the defining issues in British politics for the foreseeable future. The point of Starmer’s Labour therefore will be to solve these crises.

 

Starmer admittedly has a very difficult political tightrope to walk. But should Starmer win power, he will face the worst inheritance of any incoming government in decades. The same was true when the government of Clement Attlee took power in 1945. In part due to the ideas of the Beveridge Report, Labour was able to establish a post-war welfare consensus which lasted until the late 1970s. Britain once again faces a “revolutionary moment” in its history. Will Labour be intellectually bankrupt and torn apart as it was in the 1930s and 1970s, or will it again summon the courage to envision a “New Jerusalem”, to cast old certainties aside and to slay society’s giant evils, as it did in the 1940s?

 

I very much hope for the sake of our country that it is the latter. I want to see the back of this wretched, corrupt and heartless Conservative government. But even more than that, I want to see someone in power with the courage to propose and enact solutions to the country’s many social and economic crises. It must be the point of Starmer’s Labour to do exactly that.