What is the Starmer Project?A crowd was chanting Keir Starmer’s name in central London this week at a protest against transphobia. Pro Jeremy Corbyn chants were a familiar feature of the previous leader’s tenure. Unfortunately for Sir Keir the chant was not a positive one.
In the week that the Labour leader issued a diktat that Jeremy Corbyn would not be a Labour candidate in Islington North and appeared in Kiev to underline that he is just as keen a warmonger as any Tory it seems reasonable to ask what the Starmer project is.
Of course at the obvious level its about defeating the Tories and winning an election. However as an Editorial in the Murdoch Times moaned during the week, Starmer’s Labour remains relatively light on policy. The Times wants Starmer to distance himself further from unions and strikes.
The reaction of pro-Starmer commentators to the events of the week gave more of a clue on the Project. Polly Toynbee in the Guardian opined that it didn’t really matter whether Corbyn won as an Independent in Islington North. This happy go lucky approach to elections was not I think something Toynbee had when she stood as an SDP candidate back in the day. Then she understood the symbolic importance of Labour losses.
Labour as the late Ralph Miliband demonstrated in his book Parliamentary Socialism is above all an electoralist party. Yet a Guardian Editorial on Starmer’s diktat which advised the left in the Labour Party to back him or leave, noted winning elections is about attracting wide support not about telling hundreds of thousands of Labour voters to piss off.
Labour may well win the next Election against a backdrop of Tory implosion and SNP crisis but Starmer, verbal attacks on the Tories aside, doesn’t seem as obsessed by this (as he should be)as he is in bashing and purging the left.
It may be that the real Starmer project is to build a new centrist grouping in British politics in which the left doesn’t feature. Winning elections can come later, except that without the left, as previous Labour leaders have(often grudgingly)noted winning elections without the left is difficult. Arguably the left has others things to do but that is for another post
I’m 77 now and rejoined the Labour party when Jeremy Corbin stood for leader. Most of his policies were great. (well at least they were policies!) I haven’t resigned yet, but that is definitely on the cards. It’s so disappointing.