Keir Starmer’s assets to win – L’Express

Often caricatured as a well-off from the “trendy” neighborhoods of north London, the future British Prime Minister is in reality rather one of these Working Class Hero that John Lennon celebrates in the eponymous song (from his first post-Beatles album). Son of a machinist and a nurse, Keir Starmer had a difficult youth in a village in the south of England with a family of four children. Their silent father, for example, forbids pop music and bans all television sets from his modest home. Her mother has regular stays in the hospital. Suffering from Still’s disease, she received daily care, underwent multiple operations and the amputation of a leg. Since then, Starmer has been a great defender of the public health system.

Keir Starmer is the resilient type

In his family, the ends of the month are difficult, the bills are often unpaid and the telephone is regularly cut off. The only member of the family to study at university (law, at Leeds then Oxford), the young Keir – who owes his first name to his activist parents who thus honored Keir Hardie, one of the founders of the Labor Party at the end of the 19th century – has the pugnacity of those who know the value of effort. The man who is today at the head of Labor (Labor Party) is indeed the resilient type. And combative.

His roommates from his student days remember that he was often the only one to get up at 6 a.m. to sit at his desk and get a head start on his classes. Having become a young lawyer specializing in human rights, he decided to represent for free the protesters arrested during the March 1990 demonstrations in Trafalgar Square against Margaret Thatcher’s Poll Tax (a flat-rate tax considered unfair). Later, between 2008 and 2013, at the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, the public prosecutor’s office, he would, however, open their eyes to the difficulty and importance of the role of the police in maintaining order. Such is the pedigree of the Englishman “son of the proletariat” who, in the legislative elections on July 4, is preparing to bring the left back to power after fourteen years in opposition.

He achieved the impossible

The tabloids may find him boring, but Keir Starmer has achieved the impossible: resurrecting the Labor Party from its ashes, in bad shape after the years of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn. With his permanent excess, the latter, an eternal Trotskyist activist combining anti-capitalism and anti-Semitism, had alienated even his most loyal voters. Keir Starmer displays simple, clear and dignified social democratic beliefs. However, it was under Corbyn that the Europhile Starmer made his name when, after the June 2016 referendum, he was appointed Brexit Secretary in the shadow cabinet (shadow cabinet) of the Labor Party.

During question sessions in the Westminster Parliament, he shines when he demands Brexit negotiators to make their strategy public. But this is not enough to revive Labor: ultimately, Corbyn-the-Trotskyist acts as a foil to the electorate. As a result, after the Conservative tidal wave in December 2019, Keir Starmer distanced himself and announced his candidacy for the leadership of the party a month later. He won in April with 56.2% of the votes. Today he is credited with putting the party back at the center of social democracy by combating the excesses of Corbynism which allowed anti-Semitism to flourish in its ranks. Starmer showed himself to be competent, moderate but with strong convictions illustrated by his desire to renationalise the railways.

He surrounded himself with two forty-year-olds: his future Minister of the Economy and Chancellor of the Exchequer (in charge of the Treasury) Rachel Reeves; his right arm Angela Rayner, flamboyant redhead and outspoken former trade unionist. All three are campaigning in their Battle Bus red where the word “Change” is written fifteen times! Three years ago, it was said that Keir Starmer could not win (Can’t win) ; today he can’t lose (Can’t lose).

The polls show him the winner, and by a wide margin. It’s that the conservatives (Tories) have also acted as a foil since the scandal of drunken evenings in Downing Street under Boris Johnson, in the midst of Covid confinement. Outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s election campaign looks like a trainwreck, despite a promise of seriousness contained in the slogan “Clear Plan, Bold Action, Secure Future”. In Northern Ireland, in the old shipyards of Belfast where the Titanic, a journalist greeted him with this question: “Are you the captain of a ship that is sinking?” The next day, visiting a Welsh brewer, Rishi Sunak answered questions from the BBC under a large blue sign reading Exit (exit). Every day brings its blunder which feeds the general hilarity. It is no longer a campaign, it is a way of the cross. To the point that his own camp wonders if he will go through with it.

“But what do the conservatives want? No one knows”

A poll from June 3 in any case predicted a large victory for Labor with 422 seats, an absolute majority of 194 seats in advance! Unheard of in Labor history. “Much more than a tidal wave,” judges the YouGov polling institute, which lacks superlatives. With only 140 seats estimated, the Conservatives would achieve their worst score since 1906. Worse, on June 14, a poll announced that Reform UK, Nigel Farage’s far-right movement, could overtake them.

But how did the venerable Conservative Party, which has governed for eighty years out of the last 120, long renowned for its seriousness and managerial efficiency, fall so low? According to historian Anthony Seldon, the cycle of fourteen years in power which is ending was a moment of total loss of bearings. “Since 2010 and the arrival of David Cameron to power, we have been treated to a crazy salad of disparate projects never really implemented,” analyzes the author of a series of biographies on the tenants of 10 Downing Street, from John Major to Boris Johnson and The Conservative Effect 2010-2024, to be published in July. From David Cameron’s “Big Society” to Rishi Sunak’s “managerialism” via Theresa May’s “war on injustice”, Boris Johnson’s “refresher course” and Liz Truss’ “growth shock” , the Conservatives have only zigzagged.

The historian asks: “Are they pro-market or interventionist? For a strong state or a retreating state? In favor of immigration or not? Do they want to reform institutions or weaken them? The United Kingdom must- Does it weigh in a multilateral world or go it alone like in the 19th century? Do they want to protect the environment or let the market reign supreme? Nobody knows. It must be said that all these trends coexist within the party and that no Prime Minister since 2010 has resolved to take a clear cut to define a coherent line. “It’s simple,” concludes Anthony Seldon, “since 2017, they have stopped thinking about governance; they have turned to tribalism,” forgetting the country. In total, the party was torn apart in broad daylight, exhausting five Prime Ministers, seven Ministers of Transport, ten Ministers of Education and 12 Ministers of Culture and Media!

Of course, some conservatives are tempted to take refuge behind the Covid pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine to plead extenuating circumstances. “But, historian Seldon responds point-for-tat, Harold Macmillan had to face the Suez crisis in 1956; Thatcher, wage war on the Falklands in 1982 and John Major, manage the sterling crisis on Black Wednesday in 1992.” In short, the failure of the Tories is obvious.

Brexit is the taboo subject of the campaign

In this curious moment in national history, there is also a big absentee. It is Brexit, which has disappeared from conversations and from the campaign. On the subject, Starmer is discreet, playing appeasement so as not to reopen painful wounds. “It’s like in The Hound of the Baskervilles of Sherlock Holmes”, confides Gavin Esler, chancellor of the University of Kent and author of How Britain Ends – English Nationalism (2021). Brexit is the dog that doesn’t bark but reveals the whole intrigue.” The instructions to Labor are strict: we don’t talk about it. When, during televised debates, journalists say the word, Conservatives and Labor watch elsewhere and respond next door. For a few seconds, an angel passes by…

Keir Starmer’s strategy perhaps boils down to this: do not take the corpses out of the cupboards, display a well-constructed budget, and above all, reassure. The defeat of the Conservatives is such that Labor does not even need to seduce or perform a brilliant Tony Blair-style pyrotechnic act. Big ideas and Europe will (perhaps) be for a second term. For now, Labor, which lost elections in 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019, just needs to look serious, competent, even boring. Presenting his program on June 13, Keir Starmer declared: “Were you expecting surprises? Were you hoping that I would pull a rabbit out of my hat? Well no, I am not a candidate for leadership of a circus.”

The change is now !

In the Labor program, nothing exceeds. No tax increase, no VAT reduction, little more than a tightening of bolts to fight against tax evasion. And just a tax on oil companies that should fund more teaching and police positions. On the immigration side, if it does not intend to follow through on the project to repatriate asylum seekers to Rwanda, Labor promises, like the Tories, to reduce the flow of migrants.

And when a voice is raised in the crowd to criticize him for being too cautious in his program, the realist Starmer cuts it short: “We are here to govern, not to protest.” For their part, Labor strategists are flooding social networks with videos. They are short, sober, effective. They all talk about “change”. Labor, at the gates of power, have been waiting for this moment for so long… They know that their time has come. And mentally, they repeat to themselves: “The change is now!”