Dishonesty corrodes democracy like acid. If politicians make promises they renege on, voters conclude that none can be trusted and disengage from the political process. Accountability – a prerequisite of any functioning democracy – becomes impossible, because if dishonesty is normalised, a priced-in background hum of politics, then objections to the stench of deceit can be shrugged off by politicians on the grounds that all of their colleagues are in the sewer, too.
Over the past few years we have heard many eloquent denunciations of the dishonesty and broken promises of Boris Johnson in particular, and leavers in the Brexit referendum campaign more generally. Those same liberals either go entirely quiet when it comes to Keir Starmer’s own unashamed deceit, or they champion its merits. A year and a half ago, Starmer stood for Labour leader under a banner of Corbynism without Corbyn: of radical politics synthesised with party unity and competence. He cooed at despondent Corbynites not “to trash” the last four years; the 2017 election manifesto was the “foundational document”, and Labour would remain committed to nationalisation, tax hikes for the well to do, scrapping tuition fees and other leftwing totems.
Some reading this may fundamentally disagree with such policies and believe Starmer should not have committed to them, which is an entirely legitimate perspective. But he did, and as his former adviser Simon Fletcher emphasises, he would not have been elected leader if he had not done so. That many liberals are repulsed by Johnson’s deceptions but embrace those of Starmer because they do not believe the left are legitimate political actors, and anything it takes to defeat them is fair game, is irrelevant. Their objection is not to dishonesty, but rather to being on the receiving end of it.
Starmer began the Labour conference by attempting to rig his party’s leadership rules to freeze out the left rather than hammering the Tories over the national fuel crisis, and ended it with a speech best summarised as Blairism without Blair. But the comparisons with Blair’s leadership are wrongheaded. The architects of New Labour – from Blair himself to Gordon Brown, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell – were genuinely substantial figures. Devastatingly effective strategists, they understood how to shape the spirit of their times to their political advantage. Above all else, they remorselessly monstered John Major’s Conservatives: Campbell went to work each day with a “how many Tories can we eat for breakfast” attitude.
That Starmer has never laid one lasting punch on a government that has presided over one disaster after another tells its own story. While the pact New Labour made with the party’s grassroots was that they would have to abandon many of their principles in exchange for power, the Starmer promise goes like this: renounce both your principles and any shot at power.
When I described Starmer’s team as “maniacs” because of their abortive attempts to reintroduce an electoral college granting MPs disproportionate power in the next leadership election, a shadow minister responded to me: “It’s worse than that: they are incompetent.” Starmer, whose own allies describe him as a man without politics, is surrounded by crude factional figures with an obsessive grudge against the left and no vision for the country. Their leader is less popular than a prime minister presiding over a country with fuel shortages, empty supermarket shelves, and an impending cut to universal credit that will drive hundreds of thousands of children into poverty.
There is nothing to recommend Starmer’s leadership. He is, as we have seen, unprincipled. He is not honest. Where Blair and Neil Kinnock were talented orators, Starmer lacks any charisma or warmth. He extolled “integrity” in the leadership election, but as his sacking in May of deputy leader Angela Rayner from her role as Labour chair underlined, he has none. That more Labour voters than not desire his resignation, that more than six in 10 people do not see him as a prime minister in waiting, and that he lost the Hartlepool byelection – a seat Labour retained even in the landslide defeat of 2019 – shows he is unelectable. Starmer is Labour’s version of Theresa May – who was originally lauded as a serious, public-spirited politician before being undone by her own cynicism and woodenness.
But Starmer’s followers – who relished savaging Corbynism as a delusional cult – blindly cling to a leadership with no redeeming features. Why? First, because they invested everything in the idea that the “grownups were back in the room”, and that with a leader extolling competence, everything would fall into place. Instead everything fell apart, despite the easiest ride from both media and Labour MPs for any leader since Blair. Now they want someone, anyone, to blame: and here’s a clue – it isn’t them. Second, because they are driven by the same factional spite towards the left as Starmer’s own internal team: he isn’t Corbyn, and while he lacks any coherent vision for the country, that’s enough for them.
So what next? An obvious argument is that Starmer should return to last year’s winning leadership mandate – his supposed offer of radical ideas fused with unity. But that is a waste of time. The icepick-wielding hacks surrounding him would never allow it, and nothing Starmer ever says can be trusted. Instead, he needs to be removed.
Those who need to understand this are not the besieged political survivors of the Corbyn-supporting left, but rather the “soft left” who were sceptical of Corbyn but still desire a transformative Labour government. When I put it to one shadow minister that this would end with the Labour party as a hostile environment for anyone to the left of Mandelson, they did not object. It’s the soft left – not just dedicated Corbynites – who now face extinction in the Labour party.
The left made serious mistakes in its time in charge of Labour – the unremittingly hostile political environment notwithstanding – that need to be learned from. But from democratic ownership of the economy to tackling the climate emergency, it remains the left with the ideas, vision and momentum among younger voters. The Starmer leadership’s only trick is to kick the left. They have nothing to say, no compelling answers to the crises afflicting and defining Britain in 2021. They have no future; and alas, so long as it remains under their management, neither does the Labour party.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
