Ninety minutes to save a party. One-and-a-half hours to convince us all that Labour now has what it takes. And what it has is Sir Keir Starmer.
Is he enough? I’m sad to say, I don’t think so.
It was a damp Wednesday afternoon and I didn’t have enough petrol to drive to the shopping centre so I tuned into the live coverage of the leader’s speech at the Labour Party conference in Brighton.
After 11 years of a Tory government in Westminster, and a thoroughly depressing five years of Jeremy Corbyn’s parish-council-style opposition (can you believe he was in charge for half a decade?), it seemed right to give Starmer a chance.
The poor chap hasn’t had much of a showcase, after all, having taken over the month after we went into lockdown and lost interest in anything but Covid-19.
How many ordinary punters even realised he’d been head of the Crown Prosecution Service?
He was doing reasonably well at the conference podium, not exactly setting the heather alight with fiery passion but definitely singeing the bracken a bit with his smouldering social conscience.
He even managed to have a go at his predecessor as well as the prime minister, which showed a bit of gumption. He was about serious politics, not tied up in trivial nonsense like Bojo. He wouldn’t offer up a programme for government that couldn’t possibly be delivered, like Corbyn had.
He didn’t quote lyrics from Kermit the Frog or any of the Muppets. He quoted lines from a poem by WH Auden. Classy.
Then he said it: “Scotland is in the unfortunate position of having two bad governments – the Tories at Westminster and the SNP at Holyrood.”
In my mind, a trap door opened and Starmer fell through the stage. All four Britain’s Got Talent judges hit red buzzers at the same time. A big bucket of green gunge toppled down on top of him.
In short, he lost me. He may have lost Scotland. It had taken Starmer about 75 minutes before he even mentioned Scotland, despite being warned by left-wing think tank Scottish Fabians that it’s impossible to get back to power in Westminster without winning big here.
Labour needs to take 150 extra seats for a stable majority in the Commons. And 25 of those crucial seats are Scottish.
Starmer must know a Labour victory will take more than the bombastic “charm” of deputy Angela Rayner playing well with the disenchanted voters of northern England.
He should have had something to say to the disenchanted Labour voters of Scotland, other than telling them they had elected a duff government.
So many voters switched to the SNP because they feel let down by Labour. They’re not stupid. They didn’t get it wrong. The Labour Party failed them over many years.
They had thrown away Scottish votes long before Corbyn took charge, slumping from 41 out of 59 Westminster seats in the 2010 election to just one seat in 2019.
And yet Starmer still tumbled into the same tired old trap of the constitution, throwing wild punches at the SNP as he fell, echoes of “Save the Union!” as he plummeted.
Down he went in my estimation. If only he’d held up his hands and said: “Sorry, Scotland, I’m listening, please come back. We’ll do better for you – and here’s how…”
But, like every London-centric politician before him, Starmer proved he just doesn’t “get” Scotland.
It’s not enough for Labour to claim to be the party of the Union. The Union is largely in jeopardy because of their failings. Own it, Starmer.
Offer us some real, impressive, convincing reasons to remain and stop focusing on Nat bashing, stop pretending it’s all about independence.
Starmer was talking about Johnson’s Tory government when he said, near the end of his speech: “If they are so bad, what does it say about us?”
What a shame he doesn’t seem able to ask the same question in reference to the government of Scotland.
He could, so easily, have side-stepped that trap door.
