Happy Christmas, all. Good tidings and so forth. But meanwhile… what is going so badly awry, so scalp-crawlingly wrong? An end-of year political assessment which lisped cheerily that the new government was doing rather well, would be an insult. Ever since Labour’s great election victory, we have endured months to learn from, not celebrate.
The opinion polling, which is terrible, is not the point. Despite a constitutionally dim-witted attempt to pull down Keir Starmer’s government with a dodgy online petition, he has the parliamentary numbers to last another four-plus years. He’s a sticker. Labour MPs already panicking should calm themselves. Politics moves fast. There is time for a triumphant revival.
I’m not even too worried about some of the political mistakes the new government has made, or the scandals and hurried departures. Again, perspective: in 1997, Tony Blair had a vicious row over incapacity benefits, and another over means-tested tuition fees – both of which caused panic among his backbenchers. By the end of that year, the first big funding scandal, the Bernie Ecclestone affair, had broken. So had the news of the foreign secretary Robin Cook’s infidelity.
My point is different. Blair himself refers to that first period in government as his honeymoon and he remained very popular. He has written about the innocence and “absence of cynicism” of those months and his “extraordinary sense of possibility. From start to finish I never lost my optimism, self-belief or objective belief in what could be done, but you can never quite recapture that amazing release of energy and boundless ‘derring-do’ that comes with the election of a fresh team…”
Starmer retains self-belief, and his objective belief in what can be done – his recent speech recasting his missions shows that. But he is remarkably unpopular. “Derring-do”? Blairish optimism seems a million miles away from the mood of the current cabinet, or indeed the country.
This is inevitable. For the biggest gap is not one of temperament or political skill. It’s the era, the surrounding spirit of the times. The first Blair government arrived during strong growth and in an economic environment tagged “non-inflationary constant expansion” or Nice. And it was, indeed, a nice era. World trade was roaring, British GDP per head was higher than most of our competitors, and all this was reflected in a spirit of optimistic can-do. The creative industries were growing at 6 per cent a year; “Cool Britannia”; some readers will remember it well.
Despite all the problems of the late 1990s, it could be argued that a generally benign environment for the West lasted until the attack on the twin towers in New York in September 2001. Fuelled by growth and feeling relatively secure (the Cold War had ended ten years earlier), the years of Nice produced “nice” liberal politics – comparatively relaxed attitudes to immigration, which was at a much lower level; widespread support for the extension of individual rights, for instance to gay people. In the warmth, politics was unfurling. To be “modern” meant to get over old divisions and reconcile – as Northern Ireland was teaching us.
The temperament of Hegel’s “world spirit” today could hardly be more different. The West is staggering back economically, facing grave security threats, and is technically overtopped by China. Mass migration and economic insecurity are causing irate Western electorates to panic. Not just in the US; you see it in Romania, Germany, and even Wales, where Reform is level-pegging with Labour.
Economic and world-power retreat are causing political mayhem but also a mood, a “Western spirit” if not a world spirit, which has become pessimistic, suspicious, hunched, increasingly illiberal. Liberalism is a child of growth and security. The success of the assisted dying campaign may be more an ending – the last hurrah of British social liberalism – than a herald.
Labour has always been a coalition between liberal optimism and statist social democracy. But today’s liberals find themselves in power at exactly the wrong moment. The tide is roaring out in a conservative direction, leaving them beached, chilly, and lonely.
This is what Starmer inherited in July. He is temperamentally suited to be a leader for grimmer times. In his ferocious recent speech on immigration, he attacked the Tories for cynically imposing higher numbers: “This is a different order of failure. This happened by design, not accident. Policies were reformed deliberately to liberalise immigration. Brexit was used for that purpose; to turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders.”
Politically, it was a brilliant judo move against the Tories. But both Labour and Tories are unpopular, and the challenge – particularly if, as rumoured, Elon Musk puts huge financial resources behind Nigel Farage – comes from Reform, which has become almost the British wing of Trumpism. So Starmer’s speech left some liberal ministers aghast at his aggressive language. Either way, it will be long remembered as a pivotal moment in the evolution of the leader and his government.
This does not simply mean that he has moved right. On economics he remains unrepentantly left. Unlike Blair, he is a natural friend of the unions, and awkward with big business. Mainstream working-class voters may like his language on immigration, benefits reforms and rebuilding the military. But that speech struck a dramatically new tone. As they used to say to scowling children: when the wind changes, your face can stick.
Meanwhile, there is a second problem of timing, not about the spirit of the times, but about Labour’s governing. Again, as business protests mount against the Budget, MPs should stay calm or, as we’d say in Scotland, keep the heid. For the Reeves doctrine – that political stability, unchanging corporate tax rates, deregulation and planning reform will eventually bring investment and growth – is perfectly rational.
It requires a painful jolt (the Budget) as the economy changes track. But that doesn’t mean that changing is wrong. Making a big course-correction is never easy, but it is what Labour was elected for. Although the arguments were very different, anger at the screeching shift in direction is reminiscent of the early Thatcher budgets. If Reeves thinks she is getting too much derision this winter, she should go back and look at what they said about Geoffrey Howe in 1981.
So, what is that second problem? It’s timing: the Starmer-Reeves medicine may take too long. Tax changes can be felt immediately but infrastructure projects may take decades. Houses don’t build themselves, nor do they get built quickly. Shifting the NHS from hospitals towards primary and social care is all the right direction. But by when will voters notice?
This is why the grinding-down and recasting of Starmer’s original missions in a speech on 5 December matters. Grittily practical targets including improving children’s readiness for school and migration, and getting the court system working must be delivered over the next couple of years if people are to believe that reform is a credible antidote to Reform.
Despite its majority, the whole government project rests on such a conversation with voters. Although the general election is more than four years away, there are English county and unitary council elections in May, then very important Holyrood elections in Scotland, and the Senedd ones in Cardiff.
Reform breakthroughs could produce instability at Westminster. No challenger to Keir Starmer has yet emerged – hardly surprising during the first months – but factionalism and ambition have not been abolished. The Chagos issue aside, the Prime Minister has done well in his international role. But in the year ahead, he must turn to his grumpy and unreconciled domestic audience – and stay very wary.
[See also: South Korea defies return to martial law]
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