Who speaks for Britain? In an era of volatility, the general election alone was never likely to settle this question. Social media has transformed politics into a permanent battle for control of the narrative. The threat that confronted Keir Starmer during the riots – only a month into his premiership – was that he would lose it. An ensemble of supervillains more redolent of Gotham than Westminster, with Elon Musk as the anarchic Joker, sought to cast Starmer as a hapless bystander: in office but not in power.
Inside the cabinet there is quiet satisfaction that the Prime Minister has defied this charge. The Hobbesian duty to preserve order was upheld. In an era of state failure, government has demonstrated anew its capacity to act. Ministers also believe that the government has prevailed on the political front. “Keir Starmer has shown that he is more in touch with public opinion than Nigel Farage,” observes one cabinet member. While the Reform leader has accused Starmer of posing the “biggest threat to free speech” in British history and of licensing “two-tier policing”, few voters share such concerns. Only 7 per cent, according to polling by More in Common, believe that the police have been “too harsh” on the rioters, while just 18 per cent agree that the police treat ethnic minorities more favourably than white people. Farage’s own favorability among the public has fallen from -35 to -42.
That voters have little time for what one No 10 aide characterises as “academic debates” over civil liberties is unsurprising. The British public are reliably authoritarian on law and order. There is mass support for the deployment of water cannons, tasers (70 per cent) and tear gas (65 per cent) against rioters and protesters. Voters only baulk at the use of live ammunition (and that is still favoured by 25 per cent).
The popularity of views that some would characterise as extreme is proof of the fallacy of the “centre ground”. Most voters do not lie in the midpoint between left and right – in the manner of the Liberal Democrats or the defunct Change UK. They lean left on the economy – favouring public ownership of utilities and higher taxation of the wealthy – and right on crime and immigration (66 per cent believe immigration numbers have been too high over the last decade). They are also liberal on race, abortion and gay rights, and strongly in favour of action on climate change. Only in Westminster would this array of views be regarded as contradictory.
“Having an entirely consistent worldview is a very elite thing, most people have a value base and they apply that to individual policy issues,” notes Luke Tryl, the executive director of More In Common. (Not for nothing did Starmer describe himself as “unburdened by doctrine” in his first speech as Prime Minister.)
How should public opinion be characterised? The “common ground” is a phrase popularised by the late Conservative cabinet minister Keith Joseph. “The middle ground consensus is only the middle between politicians,” he said in a speech to the Oxford Union in 1975. “It is an ephemeral political compromise. It has no link with achieving the aspirations of the people.”
Joseph used this insight to destroy the establishment Keynesian consensus and champion policies with a rawer “common ground” appeal: selling council homes, slashing income tax, confronting trade union militancy. Working-class Labour voters left cold by 1970s social democracy – “Weimar without the sex” in Christopher Hitchens’ description – relished it.
Ever since, politicians of left and right have aspired to emulate this ideological triumph. But they have tended to be selective in their approach. Corbynites were happier talking left on the economy than they were talking right on society. Tory Brexiteers suffered the reverse problem. Can Starmer own the common ground?
“Starmer is probably much closer to median public opinion than a PM has been for a long time,” says Tryl, a former special adviser to Conservative education secretary Nicky Morgan.
On the economy, he has adopted left-leaning policies that enjoy broad support: renationalising the railways (backed by 76 per cent), establishing GB Energy (75 per cent), imposing VAT on private school fees (60 per cent). On law and order, he has shown that he is willing to deploy the authoritarian state (who could now dub him “Sir Softy”, as Rishi Sunak once did?). Yet he is also an authentic social liberal – part of the generation that pioneered gay rights and racial equality – and a committed environmentalist.
All of these stances situate Starmer within the common ground of public opinion. There is no Tory leadership candidate similarly aligned with voters. In particular, on economic policy, the Conservatives largely remain stranded within a Thatcherite universe (few are prepared to state, as the interventionist Nick Timothy MP has, that “we need to change our economic model”).
For Labour, this is a political opportunity. Strategists aspire to expand the party’s electoral coalition rather than merely preserve it. As polling recently presented to the cabinet shows, a quarter of those who backed the Tories at the election would consider voting Labour in the future. What could persuade them to do so? At least part of the answer is an unyielding defence of order in an age when it appears imperilled. In his Oxford Union speech, Keith Joseph assailed the “politically motivated contempt for law and order” found in “a small stratum of intellectuals, semi-intellectuals and hooligans”. The opportunity available to Keir Starmer is to occupy the common ground with no less force.
[See also: The Tories should expose Nigel Farage for who he is]
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This article appears in the 14 Aug 2024 issue of the New Statesman, England Undone