It is not 1997, and Sir Keir Starmer is not Tony Blair. The national mood is not one of excitement for a new millennium, but of trepidation for what the next day or week may bring. Europe is not emerging from decades of cold war, but enmeshed in a new war of aggression. The economic outlook after the next general election will, inevitably, be challenging. Even if Sir Keir had the temperament to emulate the peppy optimism of Tony Blair’s 1997 campaign, it might well grate in 2023.
It is not surprising, then, that Sir Keir is also looking further back for his role models, asking himself who managed to capture the mood when the country was glum. Over the weekend he credited Margaret Thatcher with seeking to “drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism”. It was hardly a panegyric, but still set hares running in his party. It was not so long ago that Labour’s shadow chancellor was a man who joked that he would like to go back in time to assassinate Thatcher (a remark for which John McDonnell was forced to apologise). The Labour veteran Dennis Skinner once called Thatcher’s project a “systematic war” on working people. That is the Labour left’s caricature in a nutshell.
Yet for most of the public, Thatcher is not the demonic milk snatcher of the poll tax and industrial decay. She is the winner of a war and three general elections, who obtained a rebate on Britain’s contributions to the European Community, defeated the miners and tamed unions who seemed hell-bent on paralysing the country, reinvigorated the dream of home ownership through right to buy, secured Britain’s nuclear deterrent, and unleashed the power of finance and commerce to grow the economy. YouGov polling in 2019 found that she is the public’s most popular choice for Britain’s greatest prime minister, beating even Winston Churchill.
It therefore makes sense for Sir Keir to pay his political respects. By doing so, he sets up camp in the historical heartlands of the Tories’ political identity. He also sends a message to the public that he is not Jeremy Corbyn, despite his attempts to put his predecessor in No 10. The mention of Thatcher’s name signals a focus on fiscal discipline and enterprise at home, and strength abroad.
However, if Sir Keir is to convince the public that he embodies some of the spirit of Thatcher, he will need more than a soundbite. After all, it is difficult to imagine the iron lady suggesting, as Sir Keir did in an interview with this newspaper less than two months ago, that this country should contemplate allowing the EU to set quotas of migrants to Britain, as a quid pro quo for an agreement on returning illegal immigrants. It is also surprising that, if Sir Keir so admires Thatcher’s focus on aspiration, he should advocate policies that undermine it: for example, opposing the government’s plans to scrap the £1 million lifetime limit on tax-free pensions, which was disincentivising doctors from working, and proposing a tax raid on private schools, an engine of aspiration for many families.
Nor is Sir Keir’s rhetoric always echoed by his shadow cabinet. Angela Rayner, his deputy, promised trade unions in a recent speech that Labour would strengthen their rights from “day one”. That will hardly reassure those trying to run a profitable business (or, for that matter, members of the public hoping for reliable public services uninterrupted by strikes). The prime minister who said that “the problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money” might also have balked at Ed Miliband’s pledge of £28 billion of spending on green investment, with precious little explanation of where that money will come from. Sir Keir wants to show a clean break with Labour’s recent hard-left history — but if that is to be taken seriously, he will have to do more than intone Margaret Thatcher’s name.
