When is a pledge not a pledge? When it’s a mission.
Keir Starmer’s speech on Thursday had all the feel of a manifesto launch during a general election. The atrium setting of the Co-op building in central Manchester. Hundreds of people watching from the balconies above. Party activists bussed in to create a vibe. Several people stuck in the revolving doors. Most of the shadow cabinet squeezed into the front row, eyes rapt with wonder and hands bruised from the applause.
Only there’s no election. At least not for another 18 months. At the earliest. Possibly longer. The Tories are 25 percentage points and counting behind in the polls. There’s no way Rishi Sunak is going to call an election until he actually has to. “I’m sorry that everything is a lot worse than it was 13 years ago, but trust me to sort out the mess my party has created” doesn’t quite cut it as an election slogan.
So what was Starmer doing in Manchester? You’d have thought he might have been happy enough to sit back and let the Conservatives carry on making mistakes. After all, it’s worked well enough so far. But with Sunak currently doing his best to remain invisible, maybe the Labour leader thinks it can’t do any harm to grab the limelight. To let people see that there is an alternative. That he has some ideas. And he gets to look like the real prime minister.
Then again, Starmer does quite enjoy making speeches. Depending on how you are counting, this Thursday was his 11th or 12th major relaunch since he became party leader three years ago. Sometimes whole policies have been junked. Sometimes they have just been fine-tuned. And the speeches seem to have been coming with ever-increasing frequency. It feels as if we have had at least four since December last year. Come the autumn we could be up to two or three a week.
But practice does make … if not perfect, then something not far off. When he first became leader, Starmer had a well-deserved reputation for being a wooden performer. Someone who wasn’t entirely sure he believed in what he was saying, being forced out of his natural habitat into a public arena. He looked sweaty. Nervous. As if he had something to hide.
Now, though, Starmer seems to relish the TV cameras. Comes alive on the big occasions. He’s grown into the job. He’s seen off Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. And Sunak has given him no reason to believe he can’t see him off as well.
Not that Keir will ever be a total natural as an orator. He will never have the evangelical power of a Gordon Brown. But he’s found the self-belief and the confidence. He’s more than good enough as he is. The country doesn’t want a snake oil salesman offering shares in a promised land. We’ve given up on the all-too-fallible Tory Messiahs. Our sights are lowered. We now want someone decent and competent. Someone who looks as if he knows what he’s doing and can be more or less trusted. And Starmer knows he can deliver that.
Keir stripped off his jacket and raced to the podium in the centre of the atrium. He wasn’t here to make any pledges. Pledges were so last year. Instead he was on a mission to deliver his five missions. There are always five. It’s not a credible election offer unless there are five. Good growth. An NHS fit for the future. Safe streets. Equality of opportunity. Clean energy. Nothing to frighten the horses. Nothing to which anyone could possibly object. No one would have been that surprised if the Tories had come up with something similar.
At this stage, most of the missions were kept a bit vague. Though Starmer repeatedly insisted there was nothing vague about his missions. They would all have measurable targets one day. Most importantly, they weren’t just the mindless Sunak promises to try to fix the stuff he had broken. But they were all fully costed and would be achievable inside 10 years. He hadn’t even won the first election yet and he was already making a pitch for a second term.
The one mission where Keir did offer detail was growth. The UK would have the highest sustained growth of every country in the G7. This certainly wasn’t an easy target. Only once, in the 1990s, has the UK ever grown faster than Germany. And Germany hasn’t made the schoolboy error of leaving the EU. Starmer never did quite explain how we were going to make up the 4% Brexit hit to GDP and overtake the US and Germany. Brexit was not up for grabs. It was a fait accompli. Though he would manage to negotiate us a better deal. Good luck with that.
The missions might have been tough but the overall message wasn’t. The UK needed to stop the short-termism. Sticking-plaster solutions to the NHS. Never stopping to wonder why the same problems hit the NHS every winter. Now was the time for a radical overhaul. To prevent the problems occurring. At times it all sounded too good to be true, but Starmer always had the perfect comeback. After 13 years of Tory government, name one thing that works better than it did in 2010. There’s no comeback to that.
After a prolonged standing ovation – no minister wanted to be seen to be the first to stop – Starmer took questions. Few took issue with the missions. More on number of promises/pledges/missions – delete as necessary – that had been junked along the way. What had happened to the halfway house Corbynista promises on which he had been elected? How could anyone trust him again?
Starmer didn’t miss a beat. A year or so ago he might have got flustered. Tried to ignore the question. Now he went in with a smile. Almost a laugh. He’s no longer ashamed of who he is. Those promises were then. This was now. People change their minds. His goal was a Labour government, not some kind of ideological purity. A promise that could never be met because you were in permanent opposition was completely worthless. Besides, Sunak U-turned on everything. So why shouldn’t he?
And if the Tories were so worried about Starmer’s trustworthiness they knew what to do. They could call an election. And then we could see who the country trusted. Over to you, Rishi.
