True lies

This week: why is Keir Starmer like Harold Wilson, a map of regional identities, and some thoughts on the true meaning of Christmas.

It is getting harder and harder to avoid the obvious conclusion: Sir Keir Starmer is a liar. Not in the sense of having uttered a few porkies – he has, but come on, we’ve all done that – but in a broader, more character-judgement-y one. Keir Starmer is intensely relaxed about not really telling the truth.

The specific fib that’s moved me to write this down came on the Today Programme on Monday morning. Would rejoining the single market help with Britain’s growth, the Labour leader was asked? “No, at this stage I don’t think it would,” he asked, “and there’s no case for going back to the EU or going back into the single market.” Luckily for us, he had an alternative proposal at his fingertips: “I do think there’s a case for a better Brexit. I do think there’s a very good case for making Brexit work.” Thanks, Keir, what would we do without you.

Image: Craiyon.

Look, we all know what’s going on here. Yes, Brexit has added 6% to household food bills and eaten into GDP, and most of the public now regret doing it; but those who don’t are thought to include the older voters Labour needs to win back in its traditional Red Wall heartlands. So Starmer – once perceived as one of the more pro-European members of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet – is ruthlessly trying to shut down all suggestions that he might have thought Brexit was a stupid thing to do. It’s an entirely tactical move.

And who’s to say it’s even wrong? Being erroneously perceived as a Remain party hurt Labour’s chances back in 2019: if you think, as the leader of the Labour party presumably does, that the most important thing right now is steering the party to an election victory, then maybe this is the right choice. 

But it does, as a side effect, mean we don’t have the faintest idea what his government’s Brexit policy will actually look like. I’ve assumed for a while that “making Brexit work” would mean negotiating an I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Single Market sort of deal, but that seems unlikely to happen without a Tesco Value Freedom Of Movement scheme to go with it, and Starmer currently has his face set against that, too. Does that mean he really has hardened his pro-Brexit stance, just as the country starts doing the political equivalent of looking at the EU’s Instagram profile, thinking of what used to be? Or is he just lying about that, instead? We’ve no way of knowing. 

Readers of a certain political temperament may be struck by the fact I’m only writing this now Starmer has turned against what is broadly my own bit of politics, and that I didn’t bother during the previous two years when he was doing much the same to the left. It’s true that Starmer made a bunch of left-baiting promises during his leadership campaign – on taxing the rich, economic justice, migrants’ rights and so on – which he’s edged away from ever since. This, too, makes sense as a tactic, which is one reason it was applauded by some of the very people who are now absolutely furious that he’s done the same to them.

The – or at least, a – reason I’m writing this now, though, is because the fact he’s done it to both sides suggests to me it isn’t just tactics, but strategy. Something else Starmer did during the 2020 leadership race was to name Harold Wilson as his favourite Labour leader of the last half century.