Apologies for no videos of bad dancing or chaos. Sadly Labour were far to well organised for shit like that.
Starmer may not have sealed the deal with voters, but he has finally won over his own party. They may not love him, but they are united behind the Labour leader for pragmatic if not romantic reasons. Even sprinkled with glitter he seems gloomy, lacking in kenergy and kenthusiasm. Starmer entered politics late, doesn’t belong to any Labour faction, and lacks a base in the party. At times this has been a problem for him, as there were few Starmerites, if any. But also it has been an advantage, allowing him to pick the strongest front bench possible, and keeping him above the worst factional infighting.
Of course if things go bad it could easily be his undoing, but the most fractious of the Corbynites have left the party of their own accord. I am sure we will all enjoy seeing them back in their natural habitat selling Socialist Worker or some other inky mess outside a tube station in the rain.
That won’t stop people from calling him right wing, or a red Tory, neither of which are particularly true.
What he has become very good at is identifying policy areas which used to belong to the Conservatives, and moving his own policy into that space. He isn’t a Blairite, but this is a technique he learned from Blair – remember “Tough on Crime, Tough on the Causes of Crime”?
The biggest stand outs for me were environment and housing policy.
On environment Labours most eye catching proposal is for a state owned green energy company, alongside a levy on fossil fuel companies, and reversing Tory restrictions stopping wind farms. Labour clearly intend to tackle the Tories head on over environment, which is good politics.
On housing Labour went further; planning reform to quickly boost housebuilding to buy and rent, fast planing approval for brownfield sites, the biggest boost to affordable housing in a generation, a new generation of new towns, and new devolved powers to regional and city mayors to build more houses, and a government backed mortgage gaurentee scheme for first time buyers
This all is good policy, increasing housing supply, helping young people get on the housing ladder, plus it will leverage loads of private sector investment, so it will grow the economy without increasing Government borrowing. It is also exactly the kind of policy a moderate, mainstream Conservative Government could propose do, if such a thing existed any more. This doesn’t make it a bad thing, I am all in favour of parties stealing their opponents clothes to dress up their own priorities.
This puts Labour’s tanks right on the Tories lawn. Once upon a time increasing home ownership was a key Tory policy, but they have abandoned that in favour of restricting the supply of new houses to maintain property wealth. Environmental policy is also an area which the right have long tried to make their own, but which the Tories have vacated in favour of some vapid culture war.
Labour are starting to set out an agenda that is quietly radical, and yet positioned to appeal to disillusioned Tory voters. This is the smartest politics I have seen from Labour for a long time, and for the first time I am starting to think that they might achieve a decent majority, something that seemed impossible 4 years ago.