Steven Fielding

Boris’s partygate troubles mean a welcome dilemma for Starmer

The last time a Conservative government was in the midst of a crisis like partygate, Labour had a choice. Should it stick or twist? Should it passively allow Conservative voters, who had kept the party in power for more than decade, to drift away from John Major, thanks to his troubles over the economy, ‘sleaze’ and the EU, hoping they would remain with Labour come a general election? Or should it make a bold and positive case for why they could actively support Labour? 

Both approaches held dangers. Under John Smith, Labour opted to let nature take its course. At the time, it was described as a ‘one more heave’ strategy. It had merit: the party was, after all, riding high in the polls and was about do well in both the 1994 European and local elections. Smith’s death however saw a decisive change of course: the new leader Tony Blair believed the party had to convince voters of Labour’s merits to prevent any return to the Conservatives, going so far as to announce it was now ‘New Labour’.

Starmer now has a shadow cabinet team well-equipped to exploit Johnson’s troubles

Today Keir Starmer faces something of a similar choice. For the first time in his two years as leader he looks secure. The Corbynites are fading away, retreating into their Twitter redoubts. More importantly, thanks to partygate exposing Boris Johnson as a pretend populist, Labour enjoys an unprecedented poll lead. This promises to see almost all of 2019’s lost Red Wall seats return to the party: these are places where Conservative thinker James Frayne believes voters’ ‘guiding value’ is ‘fairness’.

Thanks to his last reshuffle, Starmer now has a shadow cabinet team well-equipped to exploit Johnson’s troubles; the party’s media game has also improved in recent months.

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Written by
Steven Fielding
Steven Fielding is Emeritus Professor of Political History at the University of Nottingham. He is currently writing a history of the Labour party since 1976 for Polity Press.

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