I’ve had my criticisms of Keir Starmer over the past few years. I disagreed with his decision to serve in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet and his attempt to unite the party and include the hard left when he became leader.
His leadership got off to a stuttering start. Covid made things difficult, he was behind in the polls and he then lost the Hartlepool by-election. The turning point probably came in 2020 when he suspended Jeremy Corbyn after his predecessor’s response to the EHRC report on how anti-Jewish racism had poisoned the party.
As his leadership grew stronger, the Tories began to collapse. Revelations about parties in Downing Street and other lapses in standards eventually drove Boris Johnson from Downing Street. His successor Liz Truss was forced from office after Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous budget saw interest rates and mortgage costs spiral.
The Tories’ poll ratings never recovered, especially when they spent more time arguing with each other than listening to the public.
Starmer, by contrast, dragged Labour back to sanity. Crucially, he provided strong and resolute support for Israel after the October 7 atrocities.
I think he’s made a pretty good start in No 10. He is clearly hard-working and competent, taking his responsibilities seriously – and he looked at home with other world leaders at the Nato summit in Washington.
Unlike party leaders with decades in politics, he doesn’t really have a faction or gang of supporters he has to reward with ministerial jobs, so he was free to appoint people such as prisons expert James Timpson or the former chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance from outside politics. New MPs with experience outside Westminster have been promoted too, such as the new Solicitor General Sarah Sackman, Queens Park MP Georgia Gould and Marine Colonel and war hero Al Carns.
His cabinet includes longstanding friends of the Jewish community and opponents of Corbyn such as Yvette Cooper, Bridget Phillipson, Wes Streeting and Liz Kendall, and vice chairs of Labour Friends of Israel Rachel Reeves, Pat McFadden, Peter Kyle and Jonathan Reynolds.
They capitalised on their strong start to take big decisions to cut through planning delays and accelerate housing development. They want to unblock infrastructure projects, too.
There will be difficult decisions and tough challenges on ministers’ desks already.
David Lammy travelled to Israel at the weekend. It will be interesting to see how conversations with Israeli leaders inform his decisions. Labour has promised to recognise a Palestinian state as part of a peace process and negotiated two-state solution, but no one knows at what point of any process it would happen. Nor is it clear whether they will reinstate Unwra’s funding or examine arms export licences. How quickly will they redeem their pledge in opposition to proscribe Iran’s IRGC, which is responsible for much of the carnage in the Middle East and for exporting terror to Europe and the UK too? How would they deal with a Trump presidency? And what would it mean for Israel, Iran and the Middle East, not to mention Ukraine and Nato?
Closer to home, they will need to show progress on migration. You don’t need to be obsessed with immigration to wonder how it is possible to absorb the million people the Conservatives allowed to come to the UK legally last year or worry about the impact on public services such as housing, schools and hospitals or on community cohesion and integration.
How will they deal with extremism and sectarianism, which reared its ugly head in the election campaign? Will they use the political authority provided by their large majority to take on the extremists that are dividing communities? What more will they do to tackle the increase in antisemitism?
How will they deliver on their green energy commitments without seeing prices rise or reliance on imports increase? Will Ed Miliband ban oil and gas licences in the North Sea before green alternatives are available?
There will be internal problems. John McDonnell and hard-left MPs are already organising a rebellion on children’s benefit – and that will just be the start. It won’t be plain sailing and Labour’s leadership is acutely aware that they can lose a big majority as quickly as they won it. Lots of MPs won by smaller majorities than ever before and their number one priority will be to avoid upsetting their local electorates.
The only thing we really know is that the electorate is more volatile than ever. Look at how quickly the Tories lost the big majority Boris won less than five years ago.
