We’re not even one week into an election campaign, and already Keir Starmer is playing his greatest hits. It is a sign of how serenely Labour appears to be sailing into office, 20 points ahead in the polls, with a floundering Conservative Party condemning themselves to even greater defeat with every desperate ploy they announce.
Once again, Starmer reminded us that his dad was a toolmaker, his mum was a nurse. It’s an odd tick of modern politics that politicians feel compelled to tell us their parents’ occupations. I don’t recall ever meeting someone for the first time and them raising their parents’ jobs. It’s a profoundly weird thing for grown adults to do.
There was also another mention of pebble-dashed semis, like the one Starmer grew up in Oxted which he described as “about as English as it gets… all around you have rolling pastures and the beautiful chalk hills of the North Downs”.
Making his speech on the south coast, ironically in the constituency I grew up in and joined the Labour Party nearly 30 years ago, Starmer told us too about his sisters and uncle who grew up in the area.
All of this is a refutation of the north London metropolitan elite tag. Starmer should not be characterised as a Camden human rights lawyer, but a simple lad from England’s green and pleasant land. It’s “important to repeat that, explain who I am and where I come from”, Starmer said in reply to a clearly-bored-of-hearing-it-again Chris Mason from the BBC.
Just 10 days ago, Starmer made a speech laying out Labour’s “six first steps” as he launched the party’s pledge card. He repeated them today, laying out the case for each.
Looking increasingly confident, Starmer ridiculed the chaotic policy announcement by Rishi Sunak at the weekend for all 18-year-olds to do compulsory national service, labelling it “a teenage dad’s army”, but he also made a sharp political divide: suggesting it showed the wrong priorities by diverting funding from levelling-up and tax avoidance to pay for it. “All elections are a choice”, he said “and this is a clear one: levelling up and the NHS with Labour, or more desperate chaos with the Tories.”
He attacked Tory gimmicks, spin, and chaos. It all resonated because it’s true.
Look around you and everything is in crisis: a stagnant economy, living standards down, unemployment rising, NHS waiting lists at record highs, social care in crisis, a housing crisis, councils going bankrupt and universities about to as well.
This is why Labour’s poll lead is so steady. Nothing that Sunak can do or say in this election campaign can change the material reality of the last five years of abject chaos and failure.
In contrast, Starmer declared he was putting “country first, party second”, a refrain he repeated throughout the speech, which was also the title of the speech text sent through from the party press office.
Starmer, who referred in his speech to working class families like his own being “scared of debt”, was asked by a journalist about his policy on tuition fees. We know he has junked the policy to scrapping them, but would he rule out raising them, given some universities are on the brink of bankruptcy? Starmer spent a long time agonising over tuition fees without giving a clear answer.
And this is the key issue. The people know, the journalists know, you even feel the politicians know: this election is over. The question is whether what comes next is enough to solve the multiple crises we face.
On that Starmer has faced little scrutiny. The next few weeks could be less serene if journalists pick up on the fact that Starmer’s “changed Labour Party” has far fewer answers to the problems he will inherit on assuming office.
It is a sign of how calmly Labour is sailing into power. The polls continue to put Labour 20 points ahead, and the Tories continue to look chaotic and divided. Today they attacked Starmer’s age and stamina – he’s 61 (hardly geriatric like the US presidential candidates) and became the focus of two questions from journalists to him.
The real test for Starmer’s “changed Labour Party” comes not on 4 July, but on 5 July. Then prime minister Starmer has to govern. He can take some credit (though most belongs to the imploding Tories) that, for the first election in five years, Labour will win.
Emphasising tougher rhetoric on borders and security is a clear change in tone. But the Labour Party has also changed its policy. Not just from the Jeremy Corbyn years, but also from what Starmer himself presented just a year or two ago. Gone are the commitments to taxing the wealthy or £28bn in green investment or scrapping tuition fees, among others. As the crises in Britain have got bigger, so Labour’s policy programme has shrunk.
Voters would benefit from more scrutiny and a less serene coronation of our next prime minister.
Andrew Fisher is a former executive director of policy for the Labour Party
Election 2024
The general election campaign has finished and polling day has seen the Labour Party romp to an impressive win over Rishi Sunak‘s Tories.
Sir Keir Starmer and other party leaders have battled to win votes over six weeks, and i‘s election live blog covered every result as it happened. Tory big beasts from Penny Mordaunt to Grant Shapps saw big losses, while Jeremy Corbyn secured the win in Islington North.
Nigel Farage’s Reform UK also outdid expectations with four MPs elected.
But what happens next as Labour win? Follow the i‘s coverage of Starmer’s next moves as the new Prime Minister.