It is perhaps unsurprising that Sir Keir Starmer’s admission that he may soon be our first part-time prime minister has been seized on gleefully his opponents. ‘I haven’t finished at 6 p.m. ever’, Rishi Sunak has sniped, with the Tories accusing Starmer of wanting to work a ‘four-day week’. The Labour leader told Virgin Radio that as PM he would clock off at 6 p.m. on Fridays, ‘pretty well come what may’.
Take any animating political issue and you find that Labour plans to remove it from democratic control
So close to the end of his campaign, Starmer will no doubt be ruing giving Sunak the chance to attack him over personal laziness. But this rare bit of frankness is arguably a reminder of something rather deeper about Starmer than an alleged character flaw. It shows that in his vision for the country, the prime minister, the head of the political nation, will perhaps have very little to do. Instead, his every responsibility will instead be delegated to reams of committees, quangos, bureaucrats and devolved assemblies – such is the essence of Starmerism.
In this, Starmer will be continuing the ideological project of New Labour, which worked to salami-slice the sovereignty of parliament from day one. Take the very first thing that New Labour did on taking office. ‘Iron chancellor’ Gordon Brown made the Bank of England independent and set up the Monetary Policy Committee. The idea behind this is that political control of our interest rates – that is to say, democratic control – is inherently not to be trusted. Far better to take this central function of government out of the grubby hands of politicians and into the smooth management of a cadre of independent experts.
Starmer’s Labour is set to continue in the same technocratic vein. The flagship economic policy of Rachel ‘stability is change’ Reeves is no real policy at all, but rather a pledge to introduce a ‘fiscal lock’, making it mandatory for government to submit any significant ‘fiscal event’ to the Office for Budget Responsibility. In other words, under Labour, a quango set up in 2010 will be given de facto veto power over Britain’s economic policy. While many would be alarmed at the prospect of surrendering power to the unelected Blob, for Reeves this represents the height of political virtue. ‘A Labour government will not waver from iron-clad fiscal rules’, she has boasted.
Indeed, take any animating political issue and you find that Labour plans to remove it from democratic control. A socio-economic duty will add mountains of bureaucracy to government decision-making while acting as a handbrake on any reforming economic policy. When it comes to net zero, we can expect a Labour government to take its cues from the Climate Change Committee and little else. Energy policy will end up in the hands of GB Energy, insulated from ministerial control in the same way that NHS England is today. Immigration, meanwhile, will be hived off to the Migration Advisory Council. All the issues voters care about, in other words, will under Labour be summarily ‘depoliticised’.
Nor can we expect Starmer to take an active interest in foreign policy, which, for good or for ill, was at least a string to Mr Blair’s bow. Indeed, it’s a signal illustration of Starmer’s character that while he did come out against the Iraq War in 2003, as a QC, he apparently did so for purely legalistic reasons. The Blair government’s interpretation of UN resolution 1441 was flawed, he insisted, meaning any invasion stood condemned in his eyes, not as unwise, not as immoral, but as ‘unlawful’. As leader in a future foreign crisis, we can perhaps expect Starmer to take the same inert, bean-counting approach. ‘Prime Minister, China has invaded Taiwan, what should we do?’ Starmer: ‘Well, we’ll have to wait and see what the security committee says – besides, I’ve got to take the bins out this evening.’
Starmer’s ‘quiet-quitting’ faux pas may suggest a lack of political nous from the man who would soon be PM. But it is also indicative of a politician who has no desire to be a captain of the ship of state, wresting it back on course through force of will. That would be far too ambitious for a man who doesn’t even dream. Instead, should Labour win this week, he will play the role of stately figurehead while the bureaucrats get on with the job of managing. Perhaps no one will even notice when he clocks off early on a Friday afternoon.
Comments