Starmer should prepare to panic. His entire strategy is starting to implode

 Whisper it, but the Tories may yet be able to end the sense of inevitability around a Labour victory

Source - Daily Telegraph - 25/09/23

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It's Important not to get ahead of ourselves. A Tory majority at the next general election remains the stuff of science fiction. And yet something very strange is happening: Keir Starmer’s campaign strategy is beginning to implode. The reason for this potentially game-changing development is unfathomably basic: he seems to have made the rookie error of listening to Tony Blair.

The warning signs that Starmer was being sucked into an obsolete New Labour philosophy have been there for some time: Peter Mandelson’s proximity to Starmer’s inner circle; the constant triangulating, with the party gravely warning there is no money at the same time as promising seismic change; the furious blizzard of policy papers emanating from the Tony Blair Institute as the former PM polishes his plans to rescue the country from relegation.

But it is only in the past fortnight or so that the size of Starmer’s strategic error has become clear. As the country braces itself for another tough winter, voters are yearning to hear solid solutions from the man who is overwhelmingly likely to be in charge within the next 12 months. How does Starmer plan to reconcile green ambitions with energy affordability? How will it bring down the NHS’s stubbornly high waiting lists? How will it solve the mysterious productivity puzzle amid stagnant wages? 

Instead, he has been jetting from Canada to Paris, refining a new centre-Left grand narrative of global change. Starmer’s politics is becoming infused with an unmistakable arrogance. In recent weeks, he has signalled Brexit’s death warrant, as he seeks to steer Britain back into the embrace of the world’s regulatory superpower. 

Starmer has heavily implied the only feasible way to control the borders is to paradoxically accept more asylum seekers from Brussels. On the domestic front, he has been laying down the law on the New Third Way. He continues to avoid taking a clear stance on any issue, burying internal party splits beneath a narrative of technocratic competence. 

Starmer seems to have been poorly advised that he should behave as if he is about to be anointed by history rather than elected by voters. This was precisely how the old-style Blair project worked: decide on a fudge of policies that can hold your disparate voting coalition together (today, the Remainers of Islington and the Brexit-leaning Red Wall), while casting the resulting mush as divinely ordained. Such was the despicable genius of Blairism. It makes a virtue of its contradictions, presenting incoherence as common sense and denouncing more coherent opponents as extreme. Most of all, it crushes political debate under the old lie: There Is No Alternative.

The problem is that this politics only delivers majorities when the other party is incapable of proving that there is another way. What Starmer did not bank on was that Rishi Sunak might be able to effectively argue precisely this – and thus start to deprive the Labour vision of its sense of inevitability.

To the surprise of many, Sunak has proved capable of learning from his mistakes. After struggling to meet any of his five pledges for 2023, he is urgently rebranding himself from short-term fixer to a conviction Conservative; one who can articulate long-term solutions in an age when the country’s future is imperilled as much by the alt-Centrists as it is by the zealotry of the Left and Right.

Take his reversal on net zero. The Tories are no longer willing to go along with the fairy tale that the only way to prevent capitalism’s eco-collapse is by forcing people to rip out their boilers, while condemning petrol cars to the scrap yard. Inevitably, there has been much scrutiny of Sunak’s bid for a more sensibly paced approach to carbon reduction. Some think that it will hurt him in the polls, although the initial signs are that it will not. 

But in the grand scheme of things, the Tory U-turn begins to rupture Starmer’s environmental prospectus. The creation of an actual political dividing line on green policy invites a fresh interrogation of the sanctimonious contradictions that riddle Labour’s green plan – one that giveth with its promise of green jobs and taketh away with the reality of higher energy bills.

It may also soon transpire that it is Sunak, not Starmer, who is on the right side of history. True, Biden is holding firm with his eye-watering green stimulus package. But countries from France to Sweden are scaling down their net zero ambitions.

And it may not just be net zero. Sunak may back down from reining in HS2 amid a Tory grandee revolt. But if he stands firm and proposes an alternative strategy for boosting infrastructure in the North, this is another potential grenade in Starmer’s camp. There is a gaping blank space where a properly costed Labour regional growth plan ought to be – a scandal that Starmer has sought to conceal with vague overtures to a new wave of devolution. 

Scrapping inheritance tax, meanwhile, would expose another big problem with Starmer’s pitch. The likely popularity of such a move would be a reminder that the British people believe in an aspirational society rooted in family. Such a reality is a world away from Starmer’s paternalistic liberalism of fear, which demands an ever bigger role for government. 

But regardless of whether the Tories are showing signs of a second wind, Starmer is proving himself capable of imperilling his anticipated majority without their help. 

Take his apparent belief that the only way to stop the boats is through an international technocratic solution, in alliance with the EU. What he has recklessly overlooked is that the Rwanda proposal – failed or not – has brought into the mainstream the sacrilegious notion that there should be an alternative to open borders, even if it pushes the boundaries of human rights law. 

For Starmer to pretend that the only solution is to accept a quota of migrants from the EU is tone deaf.

But perhaps most startlingly foolish of all are Starmer’s recent cack-handed comments on Brexit. He has deservedly found himself condemned on both sides, with Remainers demanding a cast-iron commitment to re-entry and Leavers warning of a new battle for Brexit. This is besides the fact that, with the Tories preparing a new case for deregulating AI, a closer relationship with the technologically stagnant EU could soon look strangely outdated.

Britain may soon find itself in a surreal situation where, despite their unforgivable record, the Tories could actually have a more compelling vision for the country than Labour. That’s when politics could get interesting.