British Labor leader Keir Starmer sees his chance

Since David Cameron’s election victory in 2010, the British Labor Party has been desperately searching for a recipe to oust the strategically wily Tories from the government benches. Now, for the first time in years, the party has a realistic perspective of coming to power in the general elections, which are due to be held by the end of 2024 at the latest – if not on their own, then thanks to the support or toleration of Liberal Democrats and Scottish nationalists.

In the hotel lobbies and bars in Liverpool, where Labor members hold their annual party conference until Wednesday, a new confidence has been palpable in recent days instead of the usual fatalism. And Labor leader Keir Starmer said in his big keynote speech on Tuesday afternoon: “This is a historic moment for Labour.”

Labor at poll high

Admittedly, Labor has done little to improve the starting position. Rather, the party is benefiting from the catastrophic false start of the new Tory Prime Minister Liz Truss: The radical growth plans presented by her Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng on Friday, which want to finance the biggest tax cuts in 50 years with new debt, have sent the pound on a historic slide that Driven up interest rates on UK government bonds and caused great nervousness in the property market.

The new government has not only lost the confidence of many market participants. Rather, after the low point of the party affair, the hoped-for recovery in the opinion polls failed to materialize. A YouGov poll released Tuesday, conducted after the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s dire announcements, rather calculated a lead of 17 percentage points for Labor on the Tories. Such values ​​last existed in 2001 under Tony Blair.

New ideological contrast

With Truss as Prime Minister, Starmer’s starting point has also changed ideologically. Boris Johnson not only presented himself as a green pioneer, but also promised state investment in infrastructure to former Labor voters in the post-industrial areas of northern England. Starmer always had a hard time with Johnson’s social-democratic course.

Now, with Truss, the ideological dividing lines are sharpening: your highly symbolic measures, such as relaxing the ban on fracking, ending the cap on banker bonuses, or abolishing the highest tax rate for high earners, are political through-the-bottom passes that Starmer gratefully accepted.

Starmer titled his speech in Liverpool “A greener, fairer future” – and painted a sharp contrast to the present. He promised to train thousands of doctors and nurses and bring them into the country to solve the dramatic shortages in the healthcare system. And he pledged to ensure green growth with massive investments in renewable energy and a new state-owned energy company, and to address foreign gas dependency.

Above all, however, after the Tories had shifted to the right, Starmer tried to reoccupy the political center – as he did under Blair’s New Labour. Like a mantra, he portrayed the Conservatives as a party that handed out gifts to bankers and the super-rich. And he presented Labor as the party that stands for healthy public finances. In contrast to Truss, Starmer promised to reduce debt and offset overspending in the household. Exactly how this calculation is supposed to work out remains a mystery, of course, especially since Starmer only wants to reverse part of Truss’ tax cuts and has not revealed where Labor would start making cuts.

“Fatherland before Party”

Starmer is and remains a cautious politician, which is why his program seems neither revolutionary nor particularly original. Since his election to succeed old-left Jeremy Corbyn in spring 2020, he has tried to give the Tories as few targets as possible in the culture struggles over political correctness, migration or transgenderism. That’s why Starmer calls for Brexit, which had divided Labor’s electoral base, only to touch up the free trade agreement without fundamentally questioning the hard exit of the Tories from the EU.

Starmer now agrees that with Truss taking office, economic policy has clearly displaced identity politics from the center of the debate. At the same time, he managed to rally the party with its different currents behind him and free it from the grip of Corbyn supporters. He filled party committees with loyalists, suspended Corbyn’s parliamentary group membership, took a firm stance against anti-Semitic tendencies in the party and made it clear that Labor is unconditionally behind NATO.

“The fatherland comes before the party,” explained Starmer. A year ago, the Labor leader was booed at the party conference in Brighton for such statements by left-wing activists. In Liverpool, the members of Starmer not only celebrated extensively, but under his guidance they even dutifully sang the national anthem in front of the picture of the late Queen Elizabeth II.

Starmer without charisma

Liz Truss hopes the markets will calm down and that her tax cuts and reforms will quickly lead to more growth. But the bet is risky and the stakes are high. As a result, Labor’s chances of replacing the Tories, who have ruled for 12 years, are better than they have been for a long time.

Starmer’s greatest burden seems to be Starmer himself. He is considered competent, but gray, demure, and dull. He lacks the natural charisma of Tony Blair. Even party friends admit that he needs to work on his public appearance and image. After getting the party on track, Starmer must try to inspire the country. Or hope that the British long for more boredom after the political show under Boris Johnson and the rollercoaster ride under Liz Truss.