Starmer the grave

The Prime Minister’s grim speech was short on sunlit uplands, but its promise was serious.

In politics “everybody” – including this everybody – is always wrong. We said Keir Starmer would make a conference speech – absolutely had to make a speech – brimful of shining hope, a gleaming, florid trumpet-solo of uplift and optimism.

Instead, Starmer gave Britain his darkest conference speech so far. Profoundly serious and grown-up, yes, but peppered with words such as uncertain, brittle, false hope; stories of misery and misadventure, and with the uncheerful news that Britain has not one, but three black holes: economic, social and political.

There was deep passion, but the passion was anger directed at Tory lies and, most effectively – most nobly – at racism. This was the speech of an agonised father with a dark imagination; an administrator who does not love a stage and believes in “show don’t tell”. It was not just unrhetorical but anti-rhetorical; the hard thoughts of a tough nut. He ended it with his collar up, marching against the storm.

Nothing less like Tony Blair can be imagined, but one throwback to the New Labour years was that this has also been a conference in which the Prime Minister had to gently demonstrate that his Chancellor did not outrank him. The Treasury has always been powerful, but never as much as under Rachel Reeves.

Her speech sprawled confidently across the political agenda, with a feminist moral energy we haven’t heard from a senior cabinet minister since the flaming prime of Barbara Castle, who, along with Harriet Harman, was name-checked in the speech.

There is so far no discernable personal rivalry between the Downing Street neighbours: team Starmer seemed genuinely delighted with Reeves’ success. But her particular style of leadership is fresh and potent. The first-person authority and ideological steeliness were unmistakeable. This was the social democratic Margaret Thatcher coming into focus.

But there is no point in having forward momentum personally unless you are being carried forward by a big idea – unless you have the spirit of the times with you. Below the headlines, the growth agenda is widely supported across the political spectrum. Recently in the Daily Telegraph, which has become the most relentless, unforgiving hater of the Starmer government – and hatred is not too strong a word for its journalistic style – the thoughtful former No 10 aide and now Tory MP Nick Timothy praised a document called “Foundations” by three thinkers on the centre-right: Ben Southwood, Samuel Hughes and Sam Bowman. He noted that it was cutting through at Westminster and hoped it could form the basis for a Tory intellectual revival, such as the one achieved by the proto-Thatcherite thinkers of the 1970s.

“Foundations” tries to understand why France has done so much better than Britain on key metrics; with similar population sizes, France has 38 million homes compared to our 30 million; per capita, electricity generation in the UK is just two-thirds of French output; projects, from trams to reservoir to airport capacity, are much harder to build here – and on and on.

Its conclusion is that the British system is sclerotic and anti-growth. They write with a refreshing, furious passion: “Britain’s political elites have failed because they do not understand the problems they are facing… Like the elites of Austria-Hungary, Qing Dynasty China, or the Polish Commonwealth, they tinker ineffectually, mesmerised by the uncomprehended disaster rising before them.”

“Foundations” is a very powerful document, which deserves to be read in full. Its essential thrust is, of course, shared by Reeves’ Treasury and, indeed, the Starmer government itself. The Chancellor spoke about the need to radically change the planning system, to get “shovels in the ground” and cranes rising across the country, building not just new housing but infrastructure. “We can return to prosperity if we build again: housing, infrastructure and energy,” wrote Timothy – but it could have been Reeves.

Crucially, the Chancellor broadly hinted at changes to the rules to allow more investment, something the New Statesman has long been arguing for. Reeves said she wanted a Treasury focused on the benefits of investment, not just its cost, and vowed to “end the low investment that feeds decline”. The Treasury, I’m told, will be studying the fiscal rule that requires overall public debt to fall between the fourth and fifth year of the forecast. Below the surface, there are big changes ahead.

All of the above leads inexorably to questions about Keir Starmer. Has he got a proper grip on government, or the agenda? He had the most wretched start to conference after the rows about taking free clothes and hospitality. He chose not to address these in his speech directly – which, given that the story falls directly into the preconditioned prejudices of much of the electorate, may have been a mistake.

It’s fair to say that democracies expect all their politicians, and especially their senior ones, to look smart and respectable. I’m told that for Starmer to look good in the course of relentless travel, press conferences, photo opportunities, official meetings and the rest requires, for instance, about 50 shirts. They don’t have to be luxury shirts, but they have to look good.

Transforming Starmer from a Kentish Town centrist dad look to a professional political leader who doesn’t look out of place alongside Presidents Biden and Macron costs money. Better, perhaps, that a Labour peer funds that than the taxpayer? If so, why would any apology be called for? Answer: because this was, even so, a political misstep; rotten politics at the time of the winter fuel allowance cut, which gave Labour’s enemies a golden opportunity.

The more serious charge is that the Prime Minister does not yet have the kind of steely grip on the centre of government that he needs. But he has been here before: as a newly elected Labour leader, he seemed to lack grip on the party machine and to look vulnerable to the forces swirling around him. But he kept on going, he hired and he fired, and the critics from those days shut up.

Today, he is a rare among Labour leaders in the grip he has on the party. With the appointment of Hollie Ridley, Starmer has his second entirely loyal general secretary in a row.

He moves with slow deliberation and no rhetorical flash, but he tends to get there. Things look chaotic at the moment because, like the rest of the country, Labour was taken by surprise on the election timing: its planning for government was supposed to be quietly going on over the summer and autumn under Sue Gray.

Caught unprepared by the election, Starmer is planning big changes to his inner team. The key Whitehall appointments – his cabinet secretary and his private secretary – are also now on Starmer’s desk. He will get there. A core message of Starmer’s speech was, “Calm down, have patience,” which is less exciting than sunlit upland visions, but it is crucial. Labour is going to work, it’s clear, if it demonstrates improvements in daily life, not borne aloft by on rosy imagination.

Meanwhile, it isn’t easy for Labour MPs to calm down. The latest polling is bleak. Opinium found a 45-point drop in Starmer’s ratings, making him less popular than Rishi Sunak, while Ipsos found that six in ten British adults were dissatisfied, with one in four Labour voters disappointed.

It is perfectly possible to argue that none of this matters. There are local elections in May, but because of the cycle, Labour should do well enough anyway. Why bother about a snapshot opinion when the next general election is more than four years away? Labour MPs facing the SNP in Scotland and Plaid Cymru in Wales know the answer to that.

I bumped into Keir Starmer before his speech and he said simply: “My job today is to explain what it’s for.” He was right. And in a surprisingly dark, serious way, he did.

This is not a perfect government, nor an experienced one. It has made mistakes. But it isn’t the Qing Dynasty, either.

[See also: Labour needs to find its purpose]