How does a Labour leader going into an election with only around 200 MPs to his name become prime minister? Well, the conventional answer is that he doesn’t, as Neil Kinnock demonstrated in 1987. Kinnock stuck around for a second go in 1992, but still couldn’t get over the line. We can tell from Sir Keir Starmer’s utterances this week that he is not really a sticking around type of bloke. We can also tell that he has identified a path to Downing Street that, while rocky and full of potential pitfalls, might just be navigable.
In his audacious conference speech on Tuesday, Starmer explicitly set himself a punishing goal – to take Labour into power at the next election, removing its frontbench team from ‘the shadows’ and catapulting it into government. Labour had had three ‘winners’ he said – name-checking Attlee, Wilson and Blair – and he intended to be the fourth.
Not only was the record of Jeremy Corbyn trashed before our eyes but so, at least implicitly, were the records of Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, the two other recent Labour leaders who managed to lose elections after inheriting far more favourable positions than has Starmer.
The affable Miliband won’t mind, even though Starmer’s speech was being made in the environs of his own Doncaster constituency. The brooding Brown probably will. No matter. For while Starmer is not a Blairite, he is clearly adopting the Blair method of opposition. And that should worry the Tories a lot.
Anything that is a drag on Labour’s election prospects that can be dispensed with is going to be dispensed with. Like Blair before him, Starmer seemed almost to relish confronting his party with the hard truth that it has been remarkably unsuccessful in elections for the vast majority of its history.
Where Blair’s most eye-catching moves were to chuck overboard the doctrinaire socialism of Clause 4 and pal up with Rupert Murdoch, Starmer’s have so far been to adopt a zero tolerance approach towards anti-Semitism, to run up the white flag in Labour’s war against Brexit and to begin what will surely be an extended courtship of people with socially conservative views.
Speaking from a shaky part of the remaining Red Wall ramparts (Caroline Flint’s next door Don Valley seat was lost in December and Labour’s majorities tumbled in the two Doncaster seats), Starmer made his own patriotism the theme of his speech. He cleverly turned his knighthood – used by opponents to depict him as a London establishment stooge – to his advantage by talking of his pride when his parents, a nurse and a joiner, saw him awarded it at Buckingham Palace.
He also revealed that his wife’s mother was from Doncaster and that he is a regular attender of the St Ledger at the town’s famous racecourse. The substance of these revelations matters rather less than that he chose to make them. When the family pet is revealed to be a champion Whippet we shall know that he really means business.
While Starmer’s writing of the opening paragraphs of his love letter to working class provincial England tells us that winning back the rest of the Red Wall, rather than a drive further into middle class territory traditionally contested by the Lib Dems and the Tories, is his key strategic goal, that can only conceivably take Labour back to the ballpark of 260 seats. This, give or take, is what was achieved by Brown in 2010 and Corbyn in 2017 – losers both.
So he needs something else. And on Wednesday there came a huge clue as to what that might be when he confirmed that should Nicola Sturgeon win another majority in the Scottish parliament next year (she will), he will support a second referendum on independence for Scotland.
In doing this, Starmer ruthlessly cut the ground from under any hopes the Scottish Labour party has of doing well in the Holyrood elections, which will now surely be a straight fight between the anti-Union SNP and pro-Union Tories. He has done this because he knows such hopes were illusory anyway and that Labour cannot recover in Scotland until Sturgeon has been awarded and fought her plebiscite.
So this is the Starmer plan: take Labour back to 260 seats in 2024 by winning back most of a Red Wall disillusioned by the lack of much evidence of ‘levelling up’; co-opt between 40 and 50 SNP MPs by means of his commitment to IndyRef2; hope the Lib Dems take another 10 seats off the Tories; rope in a handful more ‘progressive’ MPs (SDLP, Plaid Cymru, Green). That will leave about 340 MPs in play for him with the remaining 310 being Tories and DUP. Under these circumstances we could see a minority Labour administration with the agreed backing of the other Left parties or a full progressive coalition.
IndyRef2 will then take place in 2025 or 2026. If Scotland votes Yes then the departure negotiation and transition will occur over the rest of the parliamentary term, guaranteeing Starmer continued SNP votes in the Commons until the 2028 election. If Scotland votes No, which is still the more likely outcome, then Starmer will be the man who saved the Union and the Sturgeon project will be over.
In those circumstances, Labour will be well placed to scoop up most of its former Scottish seats in a subsequent general election. Indeed Starmer, at the height of his authority, may go for a snap contest to exploit the moment.
There are many things the Tories could do to thwart this mission. But the cakewalk days are over.
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