What is Labour’s offer for Nigel Farage? Yes, you read that right. Of course, Keir Starmer’s party detests almost everything the former Ukip leader stands for, including Brexit and immigration control. That almost goes without saying. But we are well into the phase of the political cycle when grubbing for votes is far more crucial than are purist ideals.
A generation ago, in advance of the 1997 election, Tony Blair and his gang were making regular overtures to Margaret Thatcher, who they knew to be deeply unimpressed by her successor John Major. Early in 1995, Blair caused consternation among many Labour left-wingers by praising aspects of Thatcher’s premiership, describing her as ‘a thoroughly determined person’ whose emphasis on enterprise had been proved right.
It did not take long for him to hit paydirt when she gave an interview to the Sunday Times in which she offered him guarded praise in return, describing him as Labour’s most formidable leader since Hugh Gaitskell and adding: ‘I see a lot of socialism in Labour’s front bench, but not in Blair. I think he genuinely has moved.’
Where is Starmer’s offer to Farage who is, after all, the closest thing we have to a modern-day Thatcher?
In effect, the Iron Lady had given her millions of admirers with right of centre views permission to view Blair as no worse – and possibly an improvement – on the despised Major. Even Gordon Brown, a far less imaginative politician than Blair, attempted to pull off the same trick in 2007 when he invited Thatcher to tea at Downing Street. She was delighted to attend and the event would have given him a perfect launchpad for a snap election had he not dithered and then lost his nerve.
So, where is Keir Starmer’s offer to Farage who is, after all, the closest thing we have to a modern-day Thatcher: highly influential in the eyes of millions of those with staunch Conservative opinions and yet no fan of the current Tory regime? It was indeed Farage who first tore away socially conservative voters in the Red Wall from Labour’s grip. He has joked that he was the ‘gateway drug’ to them going on to vote Tory in December 2019.
Imagine, then, what a similar soft endorsement of Starmer by Farage could do. Yes, many of those on the ideological hard left would emit squeals of anguish and cry betrayal. But that in itself would send a giant signal to those many Tory-leaners who nonetheless feel that the Tories merit a good spanking that it was safe to deliver one.
Let me tell you what Labour’s offer has been. It has been to publicly rejoice in Farage’s monstrous treatment at the hands of Coutts and NatWest banks and abuse parliamentary privilege to peddle false allegations about him being in receipt of substantial funds from Russia.
Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, who is supposed to be one of the more intelligent lieutenants in the Starmer operation, even publicly took the side of NatWest chief executive Alison Rose against Farage, claiming the discredited banker was a victim of ‘bullying’ behaviour.
‘If I was in the Treasury…I’d be spending my time trying to ensure that families are properly protected during the cost-of-living crisis rather than picking a fight with banks on behalf of Nigel Farage,’ she said.
Compare that to the way senior Tory figures, right up to Rishi Sunak himself, have been speaking warmly of their former tormentor in a bid to bind in him and his substantial public following.
In today’s Guardian newspaper, Blair’s old spin chief Alastair Campbell is quoted as follows on Starmer’s operation:
‘I don’t often get that sense of that sort of relentless, restless, obsessive attention to detail on everything that you need to focus on…we were not happy if we were not making the news and we weren’t making the weather.’
Campbell was one of those who took charge of Blair’s ‘operation big tent’ back in the day – the remorseless wooing of potential Tory defectors. No doubt he had a hand in the wooing of Lady Thatcher too.
It may be that wider political conditions are so favourable for them that Starmer’s team get over the line at the general election anyway. But the absence of any considered play for the Farage vote or for Farage himself is very telling.
Campbell is right. Starmer is not running a vote-winning machine anything like as formidable as that presided over by Blair. Nobody who has watched Starmer throw countless pledges overboard can think a lack of ruthlessness is the prime cause. A lack of flair and imagination is a far more likely culprit. And that could yet cost his party dear.
Comments