The 4th July 2024 was a special night for me. The poor coverage aside (the BBC really were missing Dimbleby, weren’t they?), it was a wonderful spectacle for a 33-year-old who had only known the dying embers of New Labour and 14 years of Conservative misrule in his political consciousness. After all the damage and suffering they had inflicted on the country, at last we would be tormented no longer.
And although no one in the country bar Victoria Starmer (and even then, who can be sure?) was thrilled by the prospect of Keir being the man to lead us through the valley of the shadow of death, I still felt proud and relieved when I watched his speech on the steps of Downing Street. His words hit the right tone for the significance of the moment, delivered in his characteristically flat and uninspiring style, and I believed them.
I even felt gratitude towards Rishi Sunak for his calls for national cohesion, and contrition during his concession speech. And for clearly demonstrating his respect for the peaceful transfer of power, something in short supply at the moment. It’s devastating that we even consider it a noble act these days, but here we are.
For the record, I did not want Keir Starmer to be Labour leader. I supported Jess Phillips until she prematurely dropped out of the 2020 Labour leadership race, and then Lisa Nandy. And despite his courting of the left during that election being blatantly strategic and disingenuous, I was still shocked at the speed and scale of his betrayal. There is a long list of actions during his time as leader of the opposition that enraged me, which I don’t have time to get into, but the overwhelming relief I felt when Starmer became prime minister, particularly against the backdrop of the state of our world, was undeniable.
But sadly, and probably predictably, I have been having to ask myself the question in recent weeks – do we even have a Labour government?
Many people in this organisation and beyond expressed concerns about how Starmer would govern long before he won the election. And whilst I sympathised with their scepticism, I felt very strongly that he should not only be given a chance to prove us wrong, but that we should also make an effort to demonstrate our support for an administration that was clearly made up of people so much more decent than those who had preceded them.
However, in recent weeks I have found myself struggling to keep this up; the use of the aid budget to increase defence spending, the planned cuts to welfare, the blatant xenophobic pandering by releasing home office videos detaining migrants. It is all part of a tired and thoroughly ill-judged strategy indicative of a government that lacks imagination and courage. The desperate attempts to seduce the “red wall” archetypal voter, who is apparently anti-immigrant, anti-young, anti-EU, anti-welfare, and anti-just about anything that can be wrapped in a multi-coloured flag and labelled “woke” or “progressive”.
It is clearly ridiculous to cater so heavily to this imagined voter who, even if they do exist, represents a very small cohort of the electorate. In reality, the demographic in question is much more complex; they have a range of policy concerns, they don’t only swing between Labour and Reform, and they are not going to vote for a government just because it allows itself to be bullied by the Daily Mail and GB News.
When Starmer’s Labour took power, they faced a litany of crises possibly greater than anything we had faced as a country since 1945, and certainly since the economic instability of the 1970s. It was always going to take a government with the courage of its convictions to make genuinely difficult decisions. Not the kind of “difficult decisions” that have become a euphemism for spending cuts, but difficult decisions that, in the short term, make enemies of the very forces they are running scared of. Decisions that could even cost them the power they have waited so long for.
They don’t want to break their ridiculous promise to not raise taxes, or to rule out anything that resembles closer economic ties to Europe, through fear of the wrath of their antagonists in the press. But now, when Reform is fracturing and the Tories are over a cliff, is exactly the time to break these promises. There will be a backlash, they will be punished in the polls, and may even lose a by-election or two to Reform, but the economic gains will outweigh the short term political costs. If they don’t do this, they will ultimately break the much more important promise they made to the electorate to rebuild the country.
Of course these shifts won’t be enough on their own. Deeper and more radical changes to our tax, housing, education and welfare systems are also needed for us to truly rise from the ashes, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we need to start somewhere.
Despite the horrible domestic policy positions recently taken, Starmer has done well on Ukraine and the issue of European security. The day after the horror show in the Oval Office between Trump, his pet snake Vance, and Zelensky, Starmer embraced the Ukrainian president on Downing Street in front of the world’s media and pledged the UK’s unwavering support. He also, on behalf of our nation, expressed his admiration for one of the greatest world leaders of our age. It was the right thing to do, but it also took courage.
Now he needs to show the same courage at home. If he can’t, he has to go, and make way for someone who can.
Opinions in the above article are solely the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the opinions or beliefs of Compass as an organisation. Compass seeks to platform a wide range of progressive viewpoints that reflect the diversity and plurality of the democratic left.