This government must not fail. Let’s get this straight from the start. If Keir Starmer fails, too many British voters will conclude that both traditional parties, Labor and Conservative, have proved themselves useless and that it is time to try something else – that something else being nationalist populism. If this Labor government falls, what follows will be Farragism, either as a hybrid of UK Reform and the Conservatives, or pure and undiluted.
That’s the bet. For proof, you only have to look at our fellow democracies suffering this very fate. The US has turned to Donald Trump, while France is witnessing the slow death of Emmanuel Macron’s brand of centrism, and Marine Le Pen is on the sidelines. The German Social Democratic Coalition led by the party collapsed last monthand studies show that SPD lagging behind the far-right Alternative für Deutschland. On Thursday, Reforma advanced to Labor in a survey for the first time – and was just two points behind the Conservatives. And that’s before Elon Musk gives away a penny of the $100m (£78m) he’s said i was considering as a gift to reform – money that, as we know from his huge role in the US election last month, can made a big difference. Great Britain does not enjoy special immunity against this contagion. It can happen here.
Anyone dreading the prospect should hope so Labor may go some way to countering the anti-establishment trend, that it may show that at least some of the answers to the ills of Western life in the 2020s lie in the political mainstream. To do this, his chosen drugs must not only work in the form of good stats and health performance indicators – they must be felt at work, in the structure of voters’ daily lives.
The cautionary tale here is the fate of the Joe Biden administration. So many of the indicators were positive – highest post-pandemic growth rate in the G-7, controlled general inflation rate, unemployment downa spike in the stock market – but it wasn’t enough. Voters felt they were still paying too much for milk, eggs and petrol compared to what they had been paying four years earlier. Every chart, every graph was surpassed by this feeling.
That’s the task facing Starmer and Rachel Reeves. They should not only make things better, but also make voters feel better. One part of that is communication, telling a story that frames what people see and how they see it. Here, at least for now, the results are alarmingly bad.
Thursday at the latest reboot-that-wasn’t-a-reboot saw Starmer reveal six new ‘cornerstones”, accompanied by three “foundations”, which themselves follow six “first steps”, which are successors to Labour’s five “missions”. Listicles enjoyed some clickbait popularity on the zero-day Internet, but they don’t represent a governing narrative. We saw how they helped bury Ed Miliband Edstone made by himand how mile stones became millstones around Rishi Sunak’s neck. It’s a mystery why political professionals keep using the same, tired technique over and over again. Maybe because it worked for Tony Blair and his credit card … almost 28 years ago.
Of course, it doesn’t help that Starmer is a bloated performer with a bit of telegenic charisma. There’s not much he can do about it, but the bigger problem arises from the decisions he and his team have made. It was a mistake for him to do so voice of doom as soon as he arrived in Downing Street, promising that things could only get worse. He could leave the conversation about Reeves’ problems, associating her with the prudence required of a chancellor, while he nurtured the hope and optimism indispensable to a prime minister. The good cop/bad cop routine is one trick from the Blair/Gordon Brown playbook that never gets old.
Yet even when crafted by master artists, messages cannot do the job alone. Voters still believe their own eyes. That is why Labor will only win another term if the lived and felt experience of the British people improves. A favorite intelligent response to any real-world vignette has long been the declaration that “the plural of anecdote is not data.” Sure, but as Biden learned the hard way, sometimes anecdotes cut deeper than data and carry more weight for those who elect governments.
There was an encouraging sign that Labor was getting this in Starmer’s proposal this week. One of Labour’s original five missions was a pledge to give the UK the highest sustainable growth in the G7. This has always been absurd – Downing Street cannot determine the growth rate of the US or France – but even if achieved, there is no guarantee that it will make a tangible difference in the lives of voters. The new stage retains this goal, but downplays it in favor of another goal: higher real household disposable income. Which means: you will be better off in the next election than in the previous one. This change of purpose implies a better understanding of how this government will be judged.
But danger still lurks. On crime, for example, Labor has promised to hire 13,000 more police officers. Okay, but then think about how often you hear people say how their phone or bike was stolenand yet the police could not bring themselves to investigate – even when the victim had traced the missing item and could pinpoint exactly where it had been taken. These extra police numbers will be pointless – and of no electoral benefit to Labor – if they simply lead to 13,000 more officers offering ‘victim support’ home visits rather than recovering stolen property and catching culprits.
Likewise, reducing NHS waiting lists will be a valuable achievement and make a great statistic, but what will be felt immediately by millions will be the ability to book a GP appointment and speak to a human being when you call .
These are basic things, but in an age when there is a broad but deep sense that everything is worse than it was, that the things we once relied on are creaking or falling apart, that services are overburdened and stretched beyond the point of breaking, that everything needs more money – at a time like this, the main thing is where to start.
Addressing these primary, even fundamental, problems—solving them so that people can feel the difference in just four years—will require a massive management effort. Every other use of Labour’s time and energy must be judged in this light. Not “Will this tick a box or generate good statistics?” but “Will this register as a concrete improvement in voters’ lives by 2028 or 2029?”
There are other ambitious goals, from reshaping the British state to reorganizing the NHS. I know that advocates for these projects will say that they are essential if there is any chance of making practical changes that voters will notice. Okay. But ministers should think carefully before embarking on these epic journeys. This is not 1997, when Labor could be confident it had at least 10 years to get things done. This government is against the clock. Farage and the vultures of ultra-nationalism are watching him, wanting him to fail – so they can feast on the ruin.