Labour conference: Now comes the hard part for Keir Starmer
Fourteen heckles, seventeen standing ovations and 90 minutes of Sir Keir Starmer speaking about tools, looms and robotic exoskeletons. That was how the Labour conference ended today, with a speech that finally finished the Corbyn-era and put the party back on the long road to government.
Let us not forget that last year’s conference had a broadly similar theme, with the delightfully on-the-nose tagline of “Under new leadership”. This year we were treated to “Stronger future together”, showing the modern left still does have a sense of humour. It is telling that Starmer was forced to spend two conferences trying to detoxify the party’s image, and crush the left, after four years of Corbyn and his cronies running the show.
This year it was done with more substantial reform as rules were passed by the membership that make it harder for a left-wing MP to ever become leader again. The factional infighting this sparked overshadowed the first two days of the conference, however Starmer’s team feel the decision is now justified as the week ends on a high note for the Labour leader. The left is finished for a generation, Starmer outlined a solid list of policy priorities and landed several effective attacks on Boris Johnson.
It was particularly promising to see Starmer comfortably wax lyrical on the need for a strong economy, low taxation for workers and prosperous business conditions for SMEs. Aspiration has been a key message missing from Labour’s rhetoric for the past decade, with the party leadership ignoring the very astute political advice given by ex-Australian Labor Party Prime Minister Paul Keating.
In advice that is equally applicable to the UK as Australia, he said: “It’s no good pretending we’re working class, down at the club socking it away, out at the footy. I reckon I’m lower middle class – I’ve made the move up, which a lot of Australians have. Isn’t that what we’re all after?”
Starmer’s promises to invest in technologies of the future were also refreshing. Labour’s last two election winners, Tony Blair and Harold Wilson, both won from opposition when they placed themselves at the vanguard of societal and technological change in Britain. Starmer must be able to similarly embody the winds of change that are blowing through the UK if he is to win the next General Election.
Labour now has to focus on beating a much more difficult opponent than a thousand 20-somethings in a park chanting “Keith, Keith, Keith” – Keith of course being the nickname given to Starmer by the Twitter trots – and a ramshackle organisation of MPs saying vague and aggressive things about Israel.
Starmer and his shadow cabinet’s cut through has been minimal in the past 18 months, with the pandemic giving the government its biggest role in everyday life for 80 years. This was encapsulated by polling earlier this year that showed even two-thirds of Labour members had no opinion of shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds.
This conference should at the very least give Labour the opportunity to reset and start to attack the government every day on its record. After largely ignoring the fuel crisis over conference, Starmer now has an opportunity to get on the front foot as has been urged by some shadow cabinet ministers.
For all the current optimism from Labour’s frontbench and moderate MPs, Starmer will only have bought himself so much time. He will have to quickly show he has enough political ability to consistently wound the government and provide a vision for the future or else the post-conference afterglow will quickly wear off.
While Starmer may have described Johnson as a “one trick pony”, it has yet to be established that the Labour leader has any tricks at all when it comes to winning votes.