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Message from the management
“In case the prime minister has not noticed, the Labour party is under new management.” With that one sentence in PMQs, Keir Starmer ensured his MPs headed out for their summer break with a real spring in their step for the first time in years.
The fact is that Boris Johnson has indeed noticed Starmer is not Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader’s personal poll ratings are as impressive as Corbyn’s were dire. On the key issue of who would make a better PM, the coronavirus chaos of recent weeks has meant Starmer has a lead. It’s precisely because Starmer is a threat that Johnson now repeatedly loses his cool in PMQs.
It’s also why the Tory leader tried to resurrect the spectre of Corbyn, suggesting Starmer was complicit in his predecessor’s siding with Vladimir Putin over the Salisbury poisonings. Johnson’s attack line backfired as it allowed the former DPP to ram home his own credentials on counter-terrorism and in representing the widow of murdered Alexander Litvinenko against the might of the Kremlin.
But worse than that, the PM’s approach gave Starmer the chance to pull off a political judo throw, using his opponent’s weight against him. Security is one area where the new leader can show he is very much not a Corbynite. Even the most loyal Labour backbencher couldn’t have teed up the ‘under new management’ line better than the PM did.
Starmer knew too that in going in on the Intelligence and Security Committee report on Russia he was taking a risk that he’d be taunted over Brexit. Johnson’s jibe that this was really all about “Islingtonian Remainers” was widened into an attack that Starmer still hadn’t accepted his side had lost the EU referendum. His Remainer credentials are undeniably seen by Tories (and their focus groups) as Starmer’s biggest weakness in the Red Wall seats.
The Labour leader knows he has to convince those former Labour voters he wants a “better Brexit” rather than “no Brexit”. That’s why he’s avoided the whole issue of extending the transition period, and why he’s even stayed away from the prospect of ‘no deal’ at the end of this year - many Leave voters will blame Brussels not Johnson if we can’t get a good outcome.
Come the 2024 election, the Brexit vote will be so much history. In fact, Starmer may want to echo the PM’s own words from this February when he explained why he wasn’t using the B-word at all: “It’s not banned, it’s just over. It has happened..it is receding behind us in history.” Johnson’s real worry must be that the UK’s post-corona recovery lags behind the EU’s and exposes that his own brand of Brexit had piled economic misery on top of Covid.
That’s why Johnson is more likely to broaden out Brexit into a wider culture war against Starmer, shoring up the Tory Leave coalition by saying Starmer is just as out of touch on immigration, overseas aid and ‘metropolitan’ political correctness (aka ‘wokeness’). In fact, it’s perfectly possible to envisage the Johnson v Starmer battle over the next few years as ‘culture v competence’.
Yet on culture, Starmer made another big break with the Corbyn era today. The apology and settlement to Panorama’s whistleblowers on anti-Semitism was designed to draw a line under the past. The ECHR report will give him a further chance to do that and Corbyn’s own response (a bit like Johnson’s in PMQs) made his task even easier.
In PMQs, the only weapon an Opposition leader has is words (and by extension his judgement calls). However within his own party, a Labour leader has the weapon of action and few can deny his action has been swift and decisive on this issue.
Words still count, as evidenced by the backlash he felt over the use of “moment” to describe Black Lives Matter. He also learned a lesson on “defund the police” calls, and is now more likely to be less dismissive of Black community concerns while also making crystal clear Labour under him would increase not cut police funding.
His critics on the right and the left are still trying to work out how to attack Starmer. Back in 1997, Tony Blair was targeted by the Tories as both ‘Bambi’ (worryingly weak) and ‘Demon Eyes’ (scarily strong) and neither worked. But Blair won on both culture (showing the public he shared their values) and competence (exposing a clapped out Tory administration). The former is Starmer’s big task ahead.
The scale of the task is underlined by recent opinion polls showing the Tories still have a healthy lead over Labour (ComRes tonight put the gap at 43% to 37%) despite all the corona chaos. That may change if the Tory decision to withdraw furlough this autumn proves a huge error. It could change further if the other word Johnson doesn’t like using - austerity - returns to government spending and public sector pay rises in coming years.
To have a hope of getting into No.10, Starmer has to convince the public he could manage a crisis better than Johnson, manage his party better than Corbyn and manage the country better than Blair. Can he manage it? Maybe not. But judging by his first few short months in the job, he’s made a real start.
Quote Of The Day
“We unreservedly withdraw all allegations of bad faith, malice and lying.”
The Labour party apologises in the High Court to the Panorama whistleblowers
Wednesday Cheat Sheet
Boris Johnson warned lockdown-sceptic Tory MPs at the 1922 Committee that a second coronavirus spike could happen this winter, saying “don’t think it couldn’t happen here”.
Families and friends of some care home residents will be able to resume visiting their loved ones months after they were stopped due to the coronavirus crisis, Matt Hancock said.
Home Office minister James Brokenshire moved to quell fears that Boris Johnson’s top adviser Dominic Cummings could interfere with the work of the independent intelligence and security committee (ISC).
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said the UK and the US had agreed to close a loophole which allowed the suspect in the death of Harry Dunn to flee the UK.
Department for Work and Pensions permanent secretary Peter Schofield said it would change its safeguarding of vulnerable claimants to avoid cutting off their benefits.
What I’m Reading
How Trump Is Splitting The US In Two - Atlantic
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