What is Labour for? This was the question that haunted the party during its opening months in office. It was committed to avoiding austerity but removed winter fuel payments from all but the poorest pensioners. Its priority was economic growth but it raised taxes on business and depressed consumer confidence. It was a “government of service” that enjoyed tens of thousands of pounds of freebies. Whatever the individual justifications offered, the overriding impression was of incoherence.
But in a transformed world, there are signs that the government is acquiring the definition it has lacked. In his recent Policy Exchange lecture on Ernest Bevin – Clement Attlee’s foreign secretary – John Bew, the influential former No 10 foreign policy adviser, declared: “Fortune will favour the brave in this new era, so we need therefore a Bevinite doggedness and ingenuity and above all a sense of purpose in our foreign policy rather than succumbing to Spenglerian angst.” Downing Street, it appears, was listening.
Keir Starmer’s decision to fund higher defence spending by cutting foreign aid has divided Labour and led to the ministerial resignation of Anneliese Dodds (the woman he once made shadow chancellor). But the charge that he lacks direction and purpose – heard so often during his premiership – has for now been answered. As during last summer’s riots, Starmer has resembled a man who knows what he is doing.
By summoning European leaders to Lancaster House – and seeking to assemble a “coalition of the willing” to defend Ukraine – he has put the UK back at the centre of international statecraft. “The UK hasn’t played such a central role in geopolitics since Gordon Brown in 2008,” says one government source. In recent days, former Conservative cabinet ministers have offered greater praise for Starmer than they ever have for Kemi Badenoch.
“He has put the UK into a genuine position of leadership in support of Ukraine,” declared James Cleverly, the former foreign secretary and would-be Tory leader. “He [Starmer] is to be congratulated on hosting this event and getting the tone and action points just right,” concluded Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary.
Plenty inside and outside of Labour have long argued that security is the cause that should define Starmer’s government (see my colleague Andrew Marr’s prescient column last month). It’s a frame that the Prime Minister has embraced. “Secure at home, strong abroad,” declared the slogan on his podium last week. In his recent 1,500-word letter to cabinet colleagues – seen by the New Statesman – Starmer wrote that the government must be “the voice of working people who more than anything want security in their lives”.
Labour strategists see this as a potent dividing line with their opponents. The Tories, one says, “have no real plan to raise defence spending and no concept of an industrial strategy”, while Reform is “unpatriotically warm towards Putin”.
Ahead of the local elections in May, Labour intends to make Russia a focus of its attacks on Reform. The British electorate is one of the most pro-Ukraine in Europe: seven out of ten voters believe it is important for the UK that Ukraine defeats Russia; Vladimir Putin has a net approval rating of -85 (and -68 with Reform supporters) while Volodymyr Zelensky has one of +48.
But beyond the politics, what would a true “security government” look like? One MP close to No 10 calls for “an industrial strategy that is about three things: defence, energy and tech – with security as the imperative across all three”, and “an obsessive focus on what security feels like in physical places – investment in public squares”. Some would also like an accelerated path to spending 3 per cent of GDP on defence (currently promised in the next parliament).
The aim of providing security to voters in every area of their lives could be the thread that unites existing and future government policy. Consider today’s announcements: that 1.3 million of the lowest-paid workers will be guaranteed sick pay worth up to 80 per cent of their weekly salary; and that Labour will abolish the feudal-era leasehold system – one that torments homeowners – in favour of a “commonhold” model. Both represent an attempt to provide citizens with the economic dignity and security they lack.
But tensions endure. The line in Dodds’ resignation letter that most animated government sources was this one: “I also expected we would collectively discuss our fiscal rules and approach to taxation, as other nations are doing.”
To some in Labour, this was merely proof of why Starmer was right to remove Dodds as shadow chancellor back in 2021 (government debt is 98.4 per cent of GDP and taxes are to reach a record high of 38 per cent). But her argument resonated with those who fear that an austere Spending Review – with deep cuts to unprotected departments – will be a gift to Nigel Farage’s insurgent Reform.
For decades, the expansion of the welfare state has been funded by the retreat of the “warfare state” (as David Edgerton puts it in 2018’s The Rise and Fall of the British Nation). Now, as the post-Cold War “peace dividend” evaporates, Labour will soon face forbidding choices. If “everything has changed”, as Starmer says, does that include his fiscal approach? Here is the argument that will define Labour’s spring.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Phil Whitaker Q&A: the hidden crisis in the NHS]
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