Starmer’s message to Labour is clear: time to choose.
Perhaps the most significant thing about Keir Starmer’s speech to his party’s virtual conference was the person introducing him. Ruth Smeeth represents the former MPs who lost Red Wall seats in 2019 thanks to Jeremy Corbyn. And yes, the speech was delivered in Doncaster (near Don Valley, another Red Wall seat that fell). Starmer even contrived to speak in front of an actual brick wall that was red, just in case the message wasn’t clear.
But the deeper significance is that Ruth Smeeth is a respected Jewish Labour activist and steadfast opponent of Labour antisemitism. The online Corbynites went apeshit the moment she appeared, triggered by the very presence of a Jewish Labour woman. It was a watershed moment — when the Leader showed he meant business about tackling anti-Jewish racism, and prefigured even tougher action once the EHRC report finally appears.
The whole speech was bad news for Corbynistas. Three Labour leaders got namechecks — Attlee, Wilson, Blair (the ones who won). The one who most recently lost — Corbyn — was not named, but was certainly blamed for Labour’s defeat. ‘Never again’ said Starmer, did he want to go into an election not trusted on national security, jobs or people’s money. After naming three winners, Starmer said he wanted to be the fourth.
The framing of the speech — the future versus the past, competence versus incompetence, new versus old — was a clear rebuke to those harking back to the glorious victory of 2017 or the endless chanting. It’s all over. The next manifesto, said Starmer, whilst unwritten, would be unrecognisable, ‘not like anything you’ve heard before’ and represent the ‘future arriving.’ Bad news if you think the 2019 manifesto is holy writ.
Starmer was unafraid to praise Labour’s achievements (unlike the Corbynistas who routinely airbrush out the Blair and Brown Governments). He was also unafraid to talk about his record fighting for justice, prosecuting the killers of Stephen Lawrence, running the CPS, and the joy of his parents when he went to Buckingham Palace to receive his Knighthood. He talked a lot about family values — his family connection to Doncaster, his own parents, his pride in his own family. Pretty normal stuff to the voters, but radical after the last four and a half years.
There was some strong stuff against Boris Johnson, and on the Covid crisis, but the main message was A New Leadership. The leitmotifs of this new leadership are competence, contrition for the harm and hurt of the past four and a half years, and a conviction to win once again. Starmer placed himself firmly in the Labour revisionist tradition — applying timeless values to the changing problems of the age, and aligning himself with progressive patriotism, social justice and social solidarity after years of division. This was a Labourism which would have been instantly recognisable to former leaders such as Clem Attlee, Harold Wilson, Hugh Gaitskell, or John Smith.
Starmer made the obvious point that values are all well and good but irrelevant without power. We need to get ‘out of the shadows’ he said. The new dividing line in Labour politics is not left and right but between winners and whingers. Everyone has a choice now — get behind Starmer, join the team, and help Labour over the line, or get out of the way. Those frothing over their keyboards with charges of betrayal and sell-out are right. It’s over. Time to choose.
