Can Keir Starmer finish off the radical right?

The Lowdown interview with his biographer Tom Baldwin

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This week’s Lowdown podcast is with Tom Baldwin, whose exceptional biography of Keir Starmer is just out.  I will do a long piece about our next prime minister and Baldwin’s work later in the week.

Today I will dwell on an issue Baldwin raised in passing in our conversation: the lack of scrutiny or even curiosity about the Labour party’s programme.  

The smart thing to say about Labour and Starmer is that they have no programme. It is a ludicrous accusation, as anyone who has had to wade through Labour policy statements knows.

But it is unintentionally interesting because it betrays how conservatism still dominates the national media, even as the Conservative party heads to an overdue and, quite possibly, devastating defeat.

Baldwin’s biography emphasises Starmer’s complexity. And that I suspect that is one reason simplistic journalists are uneasy with him. After all these years dominated by Nigel Farage,  Boris Johnson and other caricatures, Starmer, like most of us, defies easy cliches. 

For example, he's the most working class Labour leader for a generation of the Labour Party, but the only one to have a “Sir” attached to his name. The honour was given for his services as Director of Public Prosecutions, and that raises a further complexity.  He was a left-wing and at a times very left-wing barrister who became the chief prosecutor, a role reversal neither left nor right are comfortable with.

Starmer is the only member of his family to have gone to university. He did not just spend three years in college. He was a huge success who could have gone on to enjoy the peaceful life of a revered legal authority. Instead he chose to dive into the spite, hatred and viciousness of British politics.

And then there’s the supposed policy vacuum. Baldwin pointed me to a press conference last year when Starmer announced vastly ambitious objectives – such as giving the UK the highest growth in the G7,  a target that strikes me as overreach.

Instead of being questioned about Labour’s proposals reporters  just asked about Conservatives plans that might generate a gotcha headline.

“Would he accept Tory tax cuts?”

“Would he stop the boats carrying illegal immigrants crossing the Channel?”

And inevitably

“Can a woman have a penis?”

And then at the end of it, the media turn around and say, we still don't know what Keir Starmer wants to do.

Well, they're part of the reason

One of the odd things about Labour is it does have a humane but tough policy on immigration. 

It wants to cut a deal with the EU. British officials will interview asylum seekers in Europe and take a quota of those deemed to be genuine refugees –  I have heard the figure of 40,000 a year mentioned.

In return, EU countries, most notably France, will accept the immediate repatriation of those who turn up on the beaches in boats.

The left won’t like it because, although the UK will be taking genuine refugees, numbers will be limited, and a Labour government will also be deporting people who have a right under the UN refugee convention to asylum.

The right won’t like it because there will be more immigration and because Labour’s deal involves cooperation with the hated EU “other”. 

But if it succeeds, it will stop the pictures of tens of thousands of illegals arriving each year, which so inflames a large section of public opinion. A Labour government will be in control.

There is an exuberant air on the British centre-left at present, which I am a little suspicious of. Because a Labour victory is certain, there is a feeling that the UK’s populist experiment is over. 

You only have to look at Trump bouncing back in the US or the possibility that Marine le Pen may be the next French president to realise that, if Labour fails, a revived radical right will be back.

Yet here is a weird thing. If I write or tweet a passionate polemic on the wickedness and folly of the government’s cruel policy of deporting refugees to Rwanda I get thousands of hits and retweets. If a right-winger does a piece on how immigrants ​are swamping our culture, the same applies.

Yet talk about policy solutions and hardly anyone cares. I can see this from the analytics Substack provides. Post articles about the practicalities, and the readership drops away.

I am not telling you off, but the practicalities matter damn it! If Trump returns, among the many hard questions Democrats will have to answer is why did they gift the issue of illegal migration over the Mexican border to the right?  Why didn’t they see the political imperative of keeping control?

Below is a piece I did on Labour’s plans, the success and failure of which will, in my view, help determine the course of British politics. (There’s a free trial, if you are not a paying subscriber.) 

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The hard questions about migration will begin when the Tory clown show ends

(Published August 2023)

Rishi Sunak has finally admitted the obvious. He accepted today that his promise to “stop the boats” was not a promise in the normal meaning of the word.  It was more of an aspiration that was closer to a New Year’s resolution than an unbreakable vow the prime minister could never and would never break.