Keir Starmer’s quiet revolution

For the first time in 13 years, the public, when polled, think a Labour leader would make the best prime minister. To be fair, Sir Keir Starmer has been helped in this regard by the Conservatives, who haven’t done wonders for their reputation as the party of competence in recent weeks. But the opposition leader has had a decent start. Yes, Starmer is right when he says his party has a ‘mountain to climb’ to win power following Jeremy Corbyn’s historic defeat, but the Tories are on their fourth term and no party has ever won five times in a row.

When Iain Duncan Smith was elected leader of the Conservative party, he said he ought to be judged on his first hundred days. The public gets a sense of the opposition leader by this point, he argued. (In his case, he was correct — and he never recovered.) As Starmer marks his first hundred days this month, the Labour leader and his supporters are finding they have more to be optimistic about. Under his leadership, he has reorganised the Labour machine, made PMQs a contest again and replaced Corbynites with his own supporters.

Starmer’s most recent act took even his own supporters by surprise. His former leader-ship rival, Rebecca Long-Bailey, shared an article on Twitter which contained an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. She was asked to take it down, refused — and was fired soon after. That act has been talked up in some Labour circles as Starmer’s own Clause IV moment.

As well as showing that Starmer means it when he says he wants to tackle anti–Semitism, it also showed the value placed on party discipline. It was deemed untenable to have a situation where shadow ministers refused instructions from the leader’s office.