Keir Starmer and the perils of consensus

In trying to please everyone, the Prime Minister risks pleasing no one.

Photo by Tolga Akmen/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In March 2022, six days after P&O Ferries sacked 800 workers over Zoom, Keir Starmer asked of Boris Johnson: “If the prime minister cannot stop that, what is the point of his government?” Sat next to Louise Haigh, now the Transport Secretary, Starmer demanded that Johnson halt all business with DP World, the Dubai-based parent company, until the workforce was reinstated (it was not).

Two years later, invited to endorse a boycott of P&O Ferries after an intervention by Haigh, Starmer declined. “That’s not the view of the government,” he said, publicly rebuking one of his cabinet ministers for the first time. What changed?

There is a short answer: Labour moved from opposition to government. Back in 2022, Starmer could condemn DP World without fear of the consequences. This time, the company’s planned £1bn investment in the UK was at stake. Forced to choose between Haigh’s soft-left activism and DP World, Starmer sided with the latter.

His decision outraged Haigh and Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, who joined her in condemning P&O Ferries. The Department for Transport press release in which the firm was labelled a “cowboy operator” had been signed off by the No 10 communications team in advance. Haigh and Rayner had not been informed that DP World was planning to make a major investment or that it was due to attend the government’s investment summit (a symptom, critics say, of a dysfunctional grid).

This simmering feud threatened to overwhelm Labour’s investment summit on 14 October. Haigh was accused by the right of jeopardising vital investment; Starmer by the left of betraying his Transport Secretary. But the dispute was ultimately resolved: DP World revoked its investment threat and Starmer has said that he has “full confidence” in Haigh (an assurance she has accepted).

The government’s mantra has long been that it is pro-business and pro-worker. “Growing up in the north-east, what was the big economic deal? It was inward investment from Japan and Nissan,” the Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, told me before the general election. “There is nothing inconsistent with wanting to attract that kind of investment and representing working people.” Today, he and Starmer insist, the same is true of DP World. The government is banning the “fire and rehire” practices that enabled the P&O scandal (the firm replaced its workers with cheaper agency labour). As such, the slate is wiped clean. All law-abiding companies are welcome in Starmer’s big tent.

But this feud has exposed a political tension within Starmer’s cabinet. Soft-left members such as Haigh and Rayner relish calling out “cowboy operators”; but Rachel Reeves and Reynolds do not want to alienate businesses. In 2011, Ed Miliband used his Labour conference speech to divide companies into “predators” and “producers”. Starmer, by contrast, defines himself through consensus, not conflict.

Is the soft left being marginalised? In opposition, Labour aides spoke of a “quad” of ministers that would make key decisions: Starmer, Rayner, Reeves and Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (a key ally of Morgan McSweeney, No 10’s new chief of staff). But in practice, some suggest, a “trio” is dominating: Reeves and McFadden sit on eight and seven cabinet committees, respectively, while Rayner sits on four (though she attends the key daily 8.30am No 10 meeting). She has also been denied an Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (against her wishes) and lacks a seat on the government’s National Security Council.

It was soft-left cabinet ministers who were closest to Sue Gray, Starmer’s ousted chief of staff. Under McSweeney, some speculate, they may fare less well. Allies of Haigh fear she will be demoted when a cabinet reshuffle comes.

The question that emerges from this is Labour’s political definition. A new project by IPPR, a think tank close to No 10, will explore how Starmer’s government can emulate the transformative Attlee, Thatcher and Blair administrations. “If the new government wants to forge a new new consensus, it will need to break Britain out of the prison of outdated ideas,” the first paper in its “Decade of National Renewal” series declares.

The Prime Minister’s allies say that his defining mission is a shift in wealth and power towards working people. The government has introduced a bold Employment Rights Bill, it has raised real-terms pay for public-sector workers and the Budget is to prioritise tax rises on the richest.

But Starmer’s emphasis on “actions not words” has not served him well so far. Asked to name Labour’s biggest achievements by More in Common, voters’ top answers were “none of the above” (27 per cent) and “don’t know” (14 per cent), while 49 per cent cited the winter fuel payment cuts as the government’s biggest mistake. The same poll had Labour tied with the Conservatives on 27 per cent and put Starmer’s approval rating at -38.

This exemplifies Labour’s political challenge. At times it has promised a rupture with the past. Its manifesto called for a “final and total rejection of the toxic idea that economic growth is gifted from the few to the many”. But to voters, it sometimes appears as if nothing has changed. The government’s policy agenda is radical but its “political vibe” – to borrow a phrase recently used by Starmer – is not. To change that, some say, Labour will need to be prepared to have more arguments and to make more enemies.

Consensus is what Keir Starmer strives for. But in trying to please everyone he must be alert to the danger of pleasing no one.

[See also: Rachel Reeves’ make-or-break Budget]