Keir Starmer lacks New Labour's defining differences with the Tories

'Starmer isn’t the face of a new political generation ... On social policy, policing and security – his impulses are to outflank the Tories on the right' // PeatWorrier

The warning signs of Keir Starmer’s approach to politics have been clear since he was a lawyer

But this approach is classic Starmer – a bit of priggery, a bit of political triangulation and another outing for his obsession with transforming questions of raw politics and values into questions of competence.It isn’t that competence is unimportant. Seriousness of purpose matters. A commitment not to wreck the place can be a valuable impulse in political leaders. Recent experience with Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng has taught us this isn’t guaranteed.

I’ve just finished reading a short biography of the Labour leader by Oliver Eagleton. Eagleton is an associate editor at the New Left Review and is marinaded in pro-Corbyn politics. The title – The Starmer Project: A Journey To The Right – gives you a flavour of the author’s fundamental thesis. Defenders of the Labour leader will write off this book as a hatchet job, seeking to rehabilitate Starmer’s predecessor and lay blame for the failure of the Corbyn project at Starmer’s door.

Which made it all the more surprising when he was made Director of Public Prosecutions in 2008. Or at least superficially so.

This was the man who stepped first into Labour politics, then the Labour leadership. For a politician so taken with his own integrity, honesty and decency – Starmer secured the leadership of the Labour Party by a series of whoppers. You don’t have to be a fellow traveller to marvel at how shamelessly he kippered the Labour Party membership after Corbyn’s resignation in December 2019.Starmer stood for leadership on the basis of Ten Pledges. The basic sell was “Corbynism but with competence”.

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