Keir Starmer ‘lacks clear sense of purpose’
claims Labour ex-policy chief
Party historian MP Jon Cruddas questions readiness for
power of leader with few ties to movement’s roots or ideology
Toby Helm
Sat 30 Dec
2023 18.00 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/dec/30/keir-starmer-detached-labour-party-jon-cruddas
A key
centre-left Labour MP says Keir Starmer appears to lack a clear sense of
purpose due to his detachment from his party’s traditions, and casts doubt on
whether he can become one of its more successful prime ministers.
In A
Century of Labour, a book published to mark 100 years since the formation of
the first Labour government on 22 January 1924 under Ramsay MacDonald, Jon
Cruddas says that Starmer – while clearly a “decent” and “principled” man –
“remains an elusive leader, difficult to find”.
Cruddas, MP
for Dagenham and Rainham and a former party policy chief, writes that “apart
from his actual name, little ties Starmer to the ethical and spiritual concerns
of Labour’s early founders, figures such as Keir Hardie and George Lansbury”.
He
continues: “His approach to economics does not appear to be grounded in any
specific theoretical understanding of inequality, material justice and welfare
distribution. Despite a successful career as a human rights lawyer, as Labour
leader Starmer appears disinterested [sic] in questions of liberty and
freedom.”
The
impression the Labour leader leaves, Cruddas suggests, is of someone
disconnected from the party’s roots and history. “Starmer often seems detached
from his own party and uncomfortable in communion with fellow MPs.
“In his
immediate circles, he appears to value the familiar and unchallenging. It is
difficult to identify the purpose of a future Starmer government – what he
seeks to accomplish beyond achieving office. Labour appears to be content for
the coming election to amount to a referendum on the performance of the
governing Conservatives rather than a choice between competing visions of
politics and justice.”
The
intervention comes as speculation grows that the prime minister, Rishi Sunak,
may be planning a May general election off the back of a tax-cutting budget on
6 March.
In
Whitehall, civil servants are being told to prepare for the possibility of a
May contest, though most MPs still believe that Sunak – who remains way behind
Labour in the polls – will delay going to the country until the autumn.
In his new
year message, Sunak describes the past 12 months as “pretty momentous”, saying:
“We’ve delivered record funding for the NHS and social care. Schools in England
are surging up the global league tables. We’re getting the economy growing.”
Looking ahead to 2024, he promises further tax cuts and “decisive action to the
stop the boats”.
Starmer
declares himself ready for government and confident he can end the cost of
living crisis, cut crime, improve the NHS, deliver cheaper energy and increase
educational opportunities for children.
Above all,
he stresses that he wants to restore trust in politics and politicians’ ability
to deliver. “This year, in Britain, the power to shape the future of our
country will rest in your hands,” he tells voters. “I’m ready to renew our
politics so it once again serves our country.”
As he
writes about a century that has produced only six Labour prime ministers –
MacDonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon
Brown – Cruddas offers his own reinterpretation of Labour history by assessing
how its competing traditions and visions for advancing socialist justice – the
belief in redistributing wealth, increasing liberty and freedom, and ideas on
how to promote human virtue – have played out.
He argues
that Labour leaders only succeed when they unite those traditions, and the
people associated with them on the left, right and centre of the party.
Cruddas
says that in his campaign to succeed Jeremy Corbyn in 2019, Starmer’s 10 policy
pledges had brought together those political traditions and ideologies around a
central idea: what Starmer called “the moral case for socialism”. But once in
office, Starmer performed a series of “pivots” or U-turns, he says, that saw
him abandon many of the 10 pledges, including those on public ownership, the
implementation of tax rises for the top 5% of earners and constitutional
reform.
He also
“oversaw a brutal centralisation of power on strictly factional lines and the
removal of any signs of independent thought from prospective Labour
candidates”.
Unlike the
postwar Attlee government or Blair in 1997, Cruddas doubts whether Starmer has
a convincing or detailed enough programme for government. “Even after four
years in post, Keir Starmer remains an elusive leader, difficult to find,” he
writes. “He is clearly an honest, decent man engaged in politics for principled
reasons. Yet there are few contributions to help reveal an essential political
identity and little in the way of an intellectual paper trail.”
He says the
ditching of campaign commitments “guarantees a complicated future relationship
with his party”. Cruddas concludes by warning that without more connections to
the party’s traditions and values, and a clearer offer to the electorate, an
election win could bring real dangers and even existential risk. “Without such
reconciliation, a party of labour could be destroyed by victory.”
A Century
of Labour by Jon Cruddas will be published by Polity Press (£25)on 19 January
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