David Gauke is a former Justice Secretary, and was an independent candidate in South-West Hertfordshire at the 2019 general election.
The opinion polls continue to be gloomy for the Conservatives. The polls are a snapshot and not a prediction, but it would be a brave person to assume that there will be anything other than a Labour government after the next election. A Labour landslide is certainly not inevitable, but the possibility cannot be dismissed.
The question that is increasingly being asked, therefore, is what type of Prime Minister would Keir Starmer make? The electorate has almost certainly not reached a definitive answer, and one political objective that the Conservative Party will have is to shape that answer as much as it can.
There is a longstanding tendency on the left of British politics to bemoan the power of the Tories and the Conservative-supporting press to influence what the public thinks about Labour leaders. This is an abdication of responsibility for Labour’s tendency to make the wrong choice of leader. It is not within the powers of one political party and its supporters to create entirely the public’s perception of another party’s leader.
A critique of a party leader only really works if it resonates with the instincts of the public. Trying to portray Tony Blair, for example, as dangerously left-wing was never going to work because the public sensed correctly that he was not. What opponents can do, however, is articulate the instinctive reservations that the public may have, and ensure that those reservations are uppermost in voters’ mind when filling in their ballot papers.
So what are the instinctive reservations that the public may have about Sir Keir?
There are two themes that successive Conservative leaders have consistently used against the current Labour leader. The first is that he wants to reverse Brexit. The second is that he served in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and wanted to make him Prime Minister.
I will not dwell on the first point other than to say that Sir Keir is clearly very sensitive about the accusation, and is going to great lengths to put distance from his previous anti-Brexit stance. It should also be added that, if the current polls are to be believed, the accusation of wanting to reverse Brexit might not be the knock-out argument that some believe.
On the second point, there is no doubt that this is awkward for Sir Keir. It was a disgrace that Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party and it was a disgrace that the party was unable or unwilling to remove him. Sir Keir did at one point resign his frontbench position in order to support a coup, but it came to nothing and Sir Keir, unlike some others, resumed his position in the shadow cabinet.
There is an explanation for Sir Keir’s behaviour which most politicians, at least, understand. There is often a choice between taking a principled position on the outside and trying to change things from the inside. If the latter option is pursued, it can be hard to distinguish between cravenness and strategic patience. But it is often those who put up with nonsense the longest who are in a position to defeat it in the end.
It is not an easy argument to make. Sir Keir has to counter it by what he does, not by what he says. Throwing Corbyn out of the Labour Party helps; finding a few more of Corbyn’s comrades to expel wouldn’t do any harm either. The very un-Corbyn performative patriotism sticks in the craw of some on the left, but Sir Keir has to do everything he can to put the Corbyn years behind him. The more he does to distance himself, the less effective the Corbyn attack will be. On this point, he has made a lot of progress.
A different – but related – line of attack is that Sir Keir is still fundamentally pretty left-wing. This can apply to both cultural and economic issues.
Transgender issues – which took up a fair proportion of Sir Keir’s New Year interview with Laura Kuennsberg this weekend – have been problematic. Yesterday, he looked less uncomfortable and had a better balanced position than in the past. It remains a divisive issue on the left, but there are also risks for the Conservatives in concentrating on the topic in that even those sympathetic with the Tory position may think an over-emphasis on these topics reveals a degree of nastiness.
In all likelihood, economics is where the next general election will be fought, against an economic backdrop that is likely to be much more challenging for the Government than any time since the Conservatives took office in 2010. But a difficult economic backdrop did not stop John Major from winning in 1992 by persuading the country that Labour offered too much of a risk on tax and borrowing.
It is clearly Sir Keir’s objective to provide reassurance that Labour can be trusted. This means disappointing those who want promises of more spending, something that Rachel Reeves appears to be prepared to do. Sir Keir is clearly about to drop Labour’s unaffordable tuition fees policy. It is also not clear how Labour can meet Jeremy Hunt’s fiscal rules whilst still promising a huge investment to deliver” a green economy”, because Hunt’s rules do not give preferential treatment to capital spending.
Labour has to work hard to establish its credentials on borrowing, and 2023 is the year in which they need to do most of the work – even if it leaves some of their supporters disappointed. The Conservatives should keep the pressure on and be quick to ask how every pledge is to be funded.
Tax may be an even harder issue for Labour. At the moment, Labour has a number of tax-raising measures which, in isolation, are popular. Higher taxes on non-doms, private equity managers, and school fee payers will poll well, but the risk is that the public conclude that Labour likes putting up taxes. The party may promise that lots of money will come from the super-rich but the electorate may treat with suspicion claims that lots of revenue can be raised from very few people. Taken as a whole, the impression could be left that Labour remains hostile to aspiration. Compared to the charge of fiscal recklessness, Labour is working less hard on countering this accusation.
Assuming that growth remains disappointing, Sir Keir will use that against the Government. It would be true to say that he does not have a compelling agenda of his own. At the moment, a plan for a greener economy is doing a lot of heavy-lifting but, even if it presented a convincing argument, it would be unlikely to be compatible with meeting the Government’s fiscal rules, as mentioned earlier. Restoring freedom of movement and membership of the Single Market would deliver an economic boost, but Starmer won’t touch it.
As for Sir Keir’s personality, the charge of dullness is hardly devastating (indeed, after recent years, it will be welcome for many). He does not always come across as strong but, in terms of party management in particular, he has proved tougher than he looks. Can he be accused of being calculating? Yes, but good politicians usually are. Unprincipled? He has changed many of his positions but he puts that done to pragmatism. He does come across as decent, so voters probably won’t believe the worst about him.
Sir Keir has not yet fully convinced the public and he is no political superstar in the Blair class. There are vulnerabilities in his record, uncertainties about his values and weaknesses in his policies. But does the Conservative Party have a critique that will scare the electorate? No, not yet.