Labour can be beaten

T his week, Labour effectively fired the starting gun on its general election campaign, and in the process revealed the sort of government it will really be, if given the chance.

The party’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, showed that she is ready to bring back the very worst of 1970s politics, pledging to strengthen the trades unions to the considerable cost of the rest of society. In the House of Lords, motivated perhaps by a combination of sentimentality, dislike of private enterprise and deference to Europe, Labour peers worked to block the reform of “nutrient neutrality” laws inherited from Brussels, a reform that could have allowed the construction of 100,000 desperately needed homes.

A day later, Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, appeared with Sir Keir Starmer in The Hague. The pair suggested that Britain should resolve the Channel migrant crisis by allowing Brussels to dictate how many asylum seekers from the Continent we should accept, in exchange for the potential ability to return some of those crossing the Channel. Sir Keir is expected to discuss the idea, possibly alongside the broader question of Britain’s future relations with Europe, at a meeting at the Elysée next week with Emmanuel Macron, the French president.

But that is not the end of Sir Keir’s international perambulations. This weekend, he is jetting off to Canada for a conference in Montreal, featuring an all-star cast of the has-beens of the centre-Left, including New Zealand’s former prime minister Jacinda Ardern, Finland’s ex-leader Sanna Marin, and Canada’s current prime minister, Justin Trudeau, among others. 

The most notable feature of this list is that its members are either no longer in power, or on the back foot electorally. Indeed, the centre-Left is in retreat across much of the Western world, lacking the new ideas and intellectual energy to win over electorates who have seen its grandiose projects fail time and time again. Internationally, the momentum and energy is with the Right. Britain, for now, appears to be the exception.

But it need not be. Sir Keir is not an unstoppable electoral juggernaut, nor is he especially popular. He is an eminently flawed politician, who is eminently beatable. After months of quietly waiting for the Conservatives to defeat themselves, he has finally been forced into making policy proposals of his own, presumably out of the realisation that people need something to vote for as well as against. It is fair to say that his attempts have backfired. 

The proposed EU migration deal has been a source of major controversy, raising questions over whether Labour still harbours a desire to take Britain back into the EU’s orbit. It remains to be seen whether the row will damage the party’s popularity in the opinion polls, particularly among the Red Wall voters it will need to secure a majority.

But it has certainly shown that the shadow Cabinet is not especially strong. Many of the figures within it are there not by virtue of great talent, but of the need to hold an innately fractious party together. A better roster would not have given the Conservatives so much ammunition over the past week. Ominously for Sir Keir, there is little evidence of strength in depth behind them, either.

Labour figures in local and devolved government seem intent on doing their best to present a continuing reminder of the cost of allowing the party to slip into power. The introduction of 20mph zones across Wales, their spread within London, the imposition of the hated Ulez by Sadiq Khan, and the mismanagement of public services by Labour-run authorities are an ominous harbinger of what a government controlled by the party could bring to the rest of the country.

The problem for the Conservative Party is that it is failing to make the opposing arguments. Indeed, too often it seems to agree with Labour, particularly on vital issues such as public expenditure. In some areas, such as tax, Sir Keir has even attempted to position his party to the Right of the Tories.

For all that Sir Keir claims to have remade the Labour Party, it is becoming clear that all he has to offer is the same old failed ideas, often in the same packaging. The argument for Rishi Sunak being bold and offering a genuine alternative is growing stronger and stronger. But time is slipping away from him politically. If he is to revive his electoral fortunes, he will have to do it soon.