Words fail Keir Starmer

This government is losing the battle of ideas.

Politics is closer to an art form than a science. The ability to deploy arguments and ideas is not an added extra, but the essence of the vocation. The great virtue of politics compared with war is that differences are resolved by the force of words, the power of persuasion. In order to prevail, elected leaders must turn to the might of language.

I was reminded of this during a text exchange the other day with a government insider on the latest suspension of Diane Abbott from the Labour Party. He was expressing frustration about the inability or unwillingness of the current No 10 regime to engage with arguments and frame a case arising from such an engagement. Within seconds he texted me a smart, fair and accessible way of explaining Abbott’s position that neither she nor No 10 seemed capable of doing: “Of course racism takes – and is experienced – in different forms. That does not mean a hierarchy of pain, but it is the reality of the way discrimination and hate plays out.”

Here was a clear argument in a couple of sentences that might have taken the heat out of the situation. No doubt not everyone would agree with the argument. That is the reality of democratic politics. There is disagreement, not least over the highly charged subjects of race, antisemitism and identity. But I suspect that for many those few words would offer persuasive clarity. Instead of engaging in an argument, the regime of Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney opted for suspension for the second time, having exhausted considerable amounts of political energy trying to block Abbott from standing at the last election.

There will be many consequences arising from McSweeney’s strategy of killing off dissenters rather than engaging with them and prevailing through the power of words. The intolerance will fuel support for an alternative to its left. This is already happening in Scotland where Scottish Labour is facing a bigger challenge than it anticipated a year ago as the SNP pitches to the left of Starmer and McSweeney. But there is a much deeper issue. Without language there can be no big ideas driving a Labour government enjoying a rare landslide majority. Equally, without big ideas there can be no vivid language to make sense of the driving purpose.

Over time, entourages within Number 10 – working sleeplessly – become cocooned and increasingly unaware of how they are perceived from the outside, as they fight endless battles from within. This seems to be happening after a year of this government. To outsiders, the withdrawal of the whip and suspension of Abbott seem joylessly forbidding and punitive. The great advantage of seizing ideas and running with them is that a mood can become adventurously upbeat, even in a time of economic darkness.

Starmer has proclaimed that there will be no “Starmerism.” He is right to be dismissive of the concept. The practice of attaching a misleading “-ism” to a prime minister’s name is a recent absurdity. Stuart Hall and his editor at Marxism Today, Martin Jacques, began the trend when they elevated Margaret Thatcher’s collection of shallow and unoriginal instincts to “Thatcherism” in the early 1980s – distorting perceptions of her weight ever since. The same happened to Tony Blair. His pragmatic caution, dressed up as boldness, became “Blairism,” again leading to a thousand misreadings of the New Labour era.

There was equally no “Wilsonism” or “Macmillanism,” though there could have been – given that, in some respects, Wilson and Macmillan were deeper thinkers than those later elevated to the status of prime ministerial philosopher-kings or queens. But rejecting an “-ism” does not mean the only alternative is technocratic pragmatism, as Starmer seemed to suggest in his recent New Statesman interview. He speaks of his government “rolling up its sleeves” and getting on with it. In that same interview, he suggested that “dignity” was his driving purpose. That is nowhere near enough.

I sense that Starmer believes any display of ideological verve is a route to electoral defeat. He speaks with apolitical confidence when asserting that he is a pragmatist, a believer in “what works” – two words that strip democratic politics of its meaning. Every single politician in the country also believes in “what works.” The debate between leaders and parties is over how to achieve workable solutions.

Engaging in the battle of ideas is not a vote-loser for Labour in the current context. This week, Starmer (or an aide on his behalf) proclaimed on X that he was dealing with the calamitous failures of water privatisation by “Ending the chaos of the past. Delivering for working people.” But privatisation was more than chaotic. It was the failure of an idea: a Tory idea that a lightly regulated, privatised monopoly would serve the country well. The policy was implemented during Margaret Thatcher’s final phase, after the 1987 election, when she also hailed a “housing revolution” that involved building no new homes, and introduced the poll tax, which triggered riotous protests, even in Tory Kent.

All this may be ancient history, but Thatcher is not. She is still deified in the Conservative Party and, to some extent, by Labour leaders too. Starmer cited her as a model in articles for Tory papers in the run-up to the last election. But if her ideas are not exposed for the failures they brought about, new ideas will not flourish.

Tantalisingly, Starmer often hints that he understands the nature of the task. He knows that “nothing works” was the motif of last year’s election, and that his government must begin to make things work. But why did nothing work? The wild succession of Tory prime ministers since 2010 did not set out to break the system. It was their ideas that failed: George Osborne’s austerity, Brexit, Rishi Sunak’s fiscal orthodoxies combined with reckless, uncosted tax cuts.

Starmer has declared that his government faces the combined challenges confronted by the Labour administrations of 1945, 1964, and 1997, an acknowledgment of the need for a mountainous ascent. He implies that the big idea is a more active, strategic, and intelligent government, working to rebuild Britain. But implication serves limited purpose; few notice implied intent. Every announcement must connect with other initiatives and be accompanied by around-the-clock commentary that sets out the context: the failure of ideas from the right, and the solution, a more active but strategic state, drawn from the left.

In the 1980s, Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley tried to engage with ideas and arguments, but the time was not right. Thatcher had convinced too many that the state was stifling, far from an instrument of freedom. The context now could not be more different. Theresa May spoke of the good the state can do. Boris Johnson hailed “levelling up” and (erratically) sought to introduce a social care levy. During the financial crisis and the Covid pandemic, voters turned to the state for rescue. The ideological tide has moved on from the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1991, during a Commons debate, former chancellor Nigel Lawson noted in a brilliant speech that the party winning the battle of ideas wins elections. On that basis, he was confident the Tories would win again. The Conservatives were 20 points behind Labour at the time. They won the election in 1992. They were still riding an ideological tide.

Lawson’s observation still applies. But this Labour government must first assemble its ideas before it can enter the field of battle.

[See also: In defence of Lord Hermer]