Lukewarm or tepid are words that do seem to fit at least the public character of Keir Starmer well. According to a new biography by Tom Baldwin he is great fun in private. Unlike other recent Labour leaders Ive never met him so I cant judge
Philip Collins column in the Times today raises the possibility of a lukewarm Starmer electoral landslide (19th Feb). Collins is a former Blair speechwriter also associated with Starmer. Politically he’s a centrist but unusually for the genre sometimes has interesting ideas.
His point is that Labour appears on course for a landslide victory at the General Election. That is a majority of around 100 seats or more. Usually this suggests some enthusiasm for the winning parties project if not their leader. However as Collins and many others note if the landslide does happen it will be because people have just had enough of the Tories.
That means that Starmer could come to Office without much electoral goodwill to apply to the awkward issues that inevitably arise for anyone trying to run anything let alone a Government.
Collins ponders a number of examples but unaccountably misses what is perhaps one of the most relevant, the 1966 General Election.
Labour and Harold Wilson won a 98 seat majority and ran a Government until 1970 that carried through a number of important reforms. It was also quite frequently a very unpopular Government, hence electoral defeat to Heath in June 1970
One clue to that can be found in Tony Benn’s Diary (13th March 1966) ‘I talked to someone yesterday who said he would probably abstain in the Election. Not to put too fine a point on it he finds Harold Wilson phoney and entirely without principle.
Benn attributed this view to those on the left who had campaigned for Wilson to become leader but found him less than radical in Office. Benn noted however that with around 50 new, and youngish Labour MPs the Party was changing, while a core of left-wing Ministers organised at senior levels.
It was however perhaps the lukewarm landslide that was more important. Turn out at the Election was 75.8%. Those were the days..
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