Where’s the beef?
Keir Starmer offered little in his first speech as PM except an inspired malapropism
Tomorrow belongs to Keir. The left-wing accountancy expert, Professor Richard Murphy, saw what he called “horrible fascist overtones” in the Prime Minister’s line that “Britain belongs to you”.
I’m not sure Der Stürmer, as the Labour leader is sometimes jokingly called, intended to echo the famous Nazi drinking song that featured in the film Cabaret. I think Mr Murphy is a little overwrought if he thinks Labour is turning National Socialist. However, Starmer does talk a lot about “taking back control,” which was, of course, the cry of the Brexit campaign in 2016. He also talked of “strengthening our borders.” Heard that somewhere before too. Perhaps that is why the former Brexit MEP, Patrick O’Flynn, in the Daily Telegraph, called it such a “powerful speech”.
Sir Keir has done this a lot in recent months, lifting phrases from the political right, which he transforms into left-wing rhetoric simply by repetition—or so he thinks. “Homes for veterans” is another curious allusion to conservative tropes. He has also promised to “stop the boats,” which is Nigel Farage’s refrain. And I’ve recently heard Sir Keir say that he will “not reach for the lever of mass immigration” to solve Britain’s growth problem. That is, word for word, what Boris Johnson used to say.
There’s been a lot of calculated emulation of conservatism in Keir’s first hundred days—and not just his fondness for wealthy donors providing freebies. Boris Johnson didn’t promise to make Britain echo to the sound of “shovels in the ground and cranes in the sky,” as Labour’s Rachel Reeves promised, but that’s exactly the kind of thing he would have said. Labour’s promises on Net Zero and cheap energy are also redolent of Boris, who was, let us not forget, something of an environmental populist.
The former Tory PM loved talking about climate catastrophe and promising to save civilisation from fossil doom. “Humanity has long since run down the clock on climate change,” Johnson declared at COP26 in Glasgow. “If we don’t get serious about climate change today, it will be too late for our children to do so tomorrow.” That is very similar to the scary talk that Labour’s Net Zero Secretary, Ed Miliband, is so fond of. Moreover, it was Boris Johnson who sought to ban new petrol and diesel cars by 2030 and to make the electricity grid 95% carbon-free by the same date. Both were found to be hopelessly optimistic, and both were scrapped by Rishi Sunak, and even by the SNP. Those ambitious targets have been restored by Ed Miliband, who seems to think he can succeed where Boris and Sunak failed. Well, we’ll see.
His latest promise at this week’s conference to force landlords to make all properties insulated to EPC “C” by law will surely fall by the wayside too, as it has in Scotland. That was because there are one million Victorian tenements which cannot be insulated at reasonable cost, cannot use heat pumps, and cannot provide charging points for electric vehicles. But Ed doesn’t really do Scotland.
Keir Starmer does, of course, and he is even named after the founder of the Scottish (and UK) Labour Party, Keir Hardie. Though the latter made a point of entering parliament wearing a working man’s tweeds, not suits bought for him by millionaires. One of the very few actual announcements from Starmer in his conference address was the confirmation that GB Energy will indeed be located in Aberdeen, with local offices in Glasgow and Edinburgh. Everyone knew that, of course, but never mind. What is more important than the location of GBE is what it will actually do.
Sir Keir gave us no clear idea of what it is for. It won’t be building wind farms, or managing the electricity grid, or acting as an energy wholesaler. That is why Mr Miliband stopped talking about it cutting domestic heating bills by £300. We have the most expensive energy in Europe even though, as we keep hearing, Britain leads the world in renewable energy generation. Eventually, someone is going to ask where all this cheap energy is going if it isn’t going into British homes. We’re told it has nothing to do with green subsidies and is all about the marginal price of gas. But that’s not going to keep pensioners warm this winter.
Sir Keir doubled down on the means-testing of Winter Fuel Payments. He’s still in the business of showing how tough he is. The expected moderation of the policy will come in next month’s budget.
And that was about it—apart from some Kamala-sounding word salad: “The defiance of ambition, the determination of service...”. Eh? No doubt Starmer is razor-focussed on delivering what can be unburdened by what has been.
But at least there was some meat in the speech. Starmer’s first conference speech as prime minister address will be remembered, if nothing else, for his inspired malapropism: “bringing back the sausages” in Gaza.