As part of their vote-Tory-or-the-kitten-gets-it final push, the Conservatives have spent the past 12 hours pushing the idea that Keir Starmer would ‘clock off’ at 6 p.m. as prime minister. This was based on a radio interview the Labour leader gave where he said he would try to protect Friday evenings for his family: his wife is Jewish and they raise their children in that tradition. Labour has been pushing back pretty hard against the Tory attacks on this matter, saying Starmer didn’t suggest in the interview that he would refuse to take important calls on a Friday night, and pointing to the full transcript where he also argued that working non-stop isn’t good for decision making.
There are so many questions over how Starmer will achieve what he is offering
He has a point, not just about the principle of taking a break and spending time with your family one night a week, but also about the way the public views this kind of behaviour. The workaholism of other prime ministers, including Rishi Sunak and Gordon Brown, for instance, hasn’t automatically endeared them to the public. But other leaders have struggled with the suggestion that they aren’t fully committed to the job. David Cameron was often criticised for ‘chillaxing’, though that seemed to have a wider application to playing tennis and sitting around in meetings with colleagues with his shoes off and feet on the table. Boris Johnson was often accused of being too busy with a number of other activities ranging from his personal life to writing lucrative books. I’m not sure, though, that Starmer’s character flaw in government is going to turn out to be laziness.
The Labour leader addressed the attacks when he spoke to Times Radio this lunchtime. He argued that ‘all I said was that on a Friday night, I try to protect time for my family… it is laughably ridiculous that this has become talked about by the Tories’. He accused the Conservatives of ‘desperation’, and complained that in the final few days of campaigning, the parties should be talking about ‘serious’ matters. He added: ‘In two days we are going to the polls. this should be about the change that is before the electorate.’
This is interesting, because while Starmer’s slogan is ‘change’, much of his own campaign has ended up focusing on Tory behaviour. This election has been dominated by rows about conduct, whether in the campaign itself (Rishi Sunak leaving D-day early) or looking further back to the premierships of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson. Even when the debate has drifted towards policy, it has ended up being about dodgy figures like the £2,000 tax claim made by Sunak about a Labour government. The ‘change’ Starmer talks most fluently about is doing government properly, behaving well, and making politics work again.
There is naturally a lot of purchase for a campaign based on behaviour, especially after the past few years. Tory MPs still say that their most visceral experiences on the doorstep were during the row over Partygate – worse, even, than when they were talking to voters angry about the expenses scandal. The public is particularly intolerant of bad behaviour when they feel that politics isn’t delivering for them: I suspect people would be happy for all MPs to be issued with a duck house on being elected if they had confidence that the economy was being well-run, that institutions had the right level of accountability and that public services were something they could have faith in when they need them. It’s not just the behaviour itself, it’s what’s not happening alongside it, or even as a result of it.
Starmer has set a lot of store by the prospect of changing politics so that it works properly, though as with many other things, he is rather short on how he will actually do that. He also has a huge task of ensuring that the things that matter to people – the economy, institutions and public services – are at least changing enough by the time of the next election that people aren’t once again disappointed by someone who turns out to have over-promised. There are so many questions over how Starmer will achieve what he is offering. How he spends his Friday night isn’t one of them.
Comments