It’s clear now that Covid is going to be with us for the long haul. Most sane voices are talking about the remainder of the crisis in terms of years, not months. Yet the government has still not been able to take itself out of short-term mode. They seem to be holding out for a vaccine miracle. Stranger still, the opposition is still in short-term mode on Covid as well. I don’t think this can continue without becoming a large problem for Starmer, both internally within Labour and also in the polls.
Starmer’s plan when it comes to the crisis so far is simple to explain. He wants to support the government wherever possible to demonstrate two things. Firstly, to show that he isn’t playing politics with the crisis while trying to be as helpful as possible to the government’s effort to help contain the virus. Secondly, to show that the government’s fault was in its handling of the details. In other words, Boris did the right things in the wrong way. Were we coming out of the Covid crisis right now, I would say that Starmer has shrewdly handled the situation overall. The only problem is, if the crisis is going to go on another year or longer, his current mode of operation on Covid is going to start to break down.
The opposition does need to walk a tightrope on this subject. If Starmer goes too far in criticising the government’s handling of the situation and begins to get in the way of too many of the measures, there could be trouble. The barbs that aren’t landing at the moment from the prime minister about how Starmer just wants to stand in the way of progress could start to work. Yet the leader’s office needs to understand that there is also such a thing as playing things too safely.
Take for example the 10pm curfew on pubs and restaurants. Starmer questioned it in the chamber, but then ended up backing it anyway. He could have made the valid case that closing establishments was going to hurt the already flailing hospitality industry while having no proven or even well hypothesised effect on the rate of infection. He could have opposed the measure saying the government weren’t following the science nor were they prioritising business. Starmer could have said that the government were scratching around, desperate to be seen to be doing anything at a time when the R rate is on the up and in doing so, landed on something that was a bad idea. Further, he could have created an internal problem for the prime minister by allying with Tory backbenchers. Instead, Starmer just blindly supported the whole thing.
Labour could also be laying into the government about the north-south divide that is opening up in terms of lockdowns and other measures. This gets Starmer dangerously close to the ‘playing politics with the disease’ territory that he has tried so hard to avoid – but again, Labour needs to find the line through all of this. I’d go even further and say that pretty soon the opposition are going to have to make the positive case that they could be doing a better job than Boris and co. rather than simply continuing to agree with the government on every measure.
The question that needs to be asked here is: if Starmer was prime minister right now, what exactly would he be doing differently to get us out of this mess? This doesn’t need to be worked out inside of the leader’s office in minute detail, but there needs to be enough of an idea in order to communicate it to the public. How the Covid crisis was handled could well be an important element of the next general election if the crisis goes on for more than another year. You have to ask what Starmer’s message would be if that is the case.
There is a vote in the House of Commons today on further Covid measures. Starmer needs to start navigating a new way through the crisis, starting immediately. He must also figure out when to agree with the government and when to attack instead of simply going with the flow, hoping it will all be over soon. That sort of wishful thinking won’t help him any longer.
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