‘Tom Belger column: ‘Starmerism’s officially empty. It’s why he won but may be why he’s done’

An empty taxi drew up, and out stepped Keir Starmer.

The old gag about Clement Attlee is far more apt for today’s prime minister than the man behind the welfare state.

A newly updated book all but confirms what many have long suspected – there’s no such thing as Starmerism. 

“He has no fixed views on anything,” one well-placed Labour source told Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund for their latest edition of Get In. Another insider claimed he “outsources any of his major thinking”. I’ve heard similarly from others myself.

We need Starmerism more than we think

‘So what’, loyalists would say. Starmer has dismissed ideology before – so much so, even one AI tool calls Starmerism “deliberately elusive”. It’s a “pragmatic, technocratic, centre-left project that prizes electability and state effectiveness over ideological clarity”.

The trouble is, missteps and U-turns make the state look ineffective. Polls make Starmer look unelectable. Without clear values, ideas or charisma to fall back on, Starmer has nothing left.

READ MORE: Full list of MPs, councillors and NEC members calling for ‘reset’ in Labour

Belief in ideas might not always inspire voters, but belief in people who believe in ideas often does. Without that, the 2024 majority wasn’t just shallow in popular vote terms, but also in depth of belief.

Politicians who believe in almost nothing look inauthentic espousing almost anything. Few things enrage voters more than inauthenticity. “I don’t think he’s got his own views and values,” a builder from Denton told The Guardian last month.

Failure to convincingly define Starmerism in Labour’s first summer let winter fuel, freebies, the far right and now flip-flopping define Labour instead for many voters. Popular policies go unnoticed without a Starmerite national story weaving them together.

It’s not just a comms problem, though. Having no rudder or North Star explains the chronic, incoherent policy flip-flopping, alienating every constituency and corroding fragile voter and market confidence.

It explains Starmer’s countless ‘reset’ speeches, missions, milestones and reshuffles, much like Sunak’s shapeshifting. It emerged last week that even in opposition his aides fretted at “too much chopping and changing”.

Johnson, Farage and Trump got away with it, through breezy elite self-confidence and shamelessness. Starmer lacks both. As they say, if you can fake sincerity, you’ve got it made. If you find faking painful it’s painfully obvious, and you get punished. Just ask May, Miliband or Brown.

Blank slate Keir wot won it?

For all he needs a Starmerism as Prime Minister, loyalists would say the void once worked – helping propel Starmer to power. It’s bleak but probably true.

Who else could have both Kendallite McSweeney offering up his train, and Corbynite Laura Parker offering her endorsement? Who else could be not just plausible but comfortable wooing members with a Corbynism-lite campaign, and then defining themselves as LOTO through anti-Corbynism and scorn for members?

And how else could Britain’s leading European human rights lawyer, fresh from pandering to Remainer members, end up questioning the ECHR and throwing free movement under the bus?

Failure to define himself helped Starmer become all things to all men, an empty vessel for the dreams and discontents of historic numbers of voters. It’s often forgotten, but hacks have said the same of 1997.

Starmer’s old right acolytes at least knew their values, and their cynicism. Kendall’s principles cost her victory in 2015, so Kendallites made peace with unprincipled tactics in 2020.

Starmer lacks their ideological intent and self-awareness, regarding shape-shifting not as a dirty means to a pure end, but sensible technocratic fiddling over ‘what works’. It explains his failure to both hold the old right line (witness Miliband’s survival), and grasp why so many others recoil.

Emptiness has one silver lining, though. A malleable leader suits the left more than Streeting’s leadership, and the right more than Rayner or Burnham as PM. For as long as left and right are unsure of victory, purgatory with Keir Starmer beats gambling on heaven or hell.

MiliMoodism – the most popular Starmerism yet

Purgatory is currently working better for the soft left – on policy at least. Miliband, Powell and others are embracing a rare chance to bend Starmerism to their will, as the price of their loyalty. Witness the remarkable pivot on big business, from prawn cocktail offensives to tirades against profiteering.

The exception is immigration, where Shabana Mahmood is too powerful to rein in.

Ironically, the resulting Starmerism – Milibandism-meets-Mahmoodism, tough on greed and tough on borders – is probably the most electorally popular Starmerism yet.

Surveys have long shown the average voter is left on economics, right on culture, something strangely lost on most Westminster parties. Most people think big business benefits owners at workers’ expense; and that young people don’t sufficiently respect traditional values.

The tragedy is, so much of Labour’s current agenda is much more radical and potentially popular than many voters will ever know  – far tougher on borders than the right will admit, and far tougher on rogue employers and landlords than the left allow for. 

In the last few weeks alone, the government has capped energy bills, subsidised heating oil and hiked the living wage; next week a watchdog will launch championing workers’ rights.

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The problem of course is voters will never give Starmer a fresh hearing to say it. They’d sniff the insincerity even if they did. If this new Starmerism’s to survive, it needs a new human face.

Several senior figures are left on economics and several right on culture, but few combine both.

Starmerism with a human face

I reckon Andy Burnham does. Even before an entranced liberal left Compass crowd last year, he said he made “no apology for taking a tough on crime approach”. 

He seemed to take Brexit’s lessons to heart on immigration, his recent doubts (and mine) aside on moving the goalposts on settlement.

Facing a national electorate, rather than left-leaning local voters and members, logic suggests a less liberal strain would come through.

Voters notably don’t seem to share Westminster insiders’ ‘Blairite, Brownite, Corbynite’ cynicism about Burnham, favouring him significantly over rivals in a new poll. I can believe the latest incarnation of Burnhamism is sincere, even if not all past versions looked it.

Is Burnham actually the answer, though? I’ll leave that for another column, if he makes the ballot.

I’ll leave the last word to the other actual Labour leader I began this column repeating a rude joke about.

Attlee once wrote that if any politician stays in the job long enough, it “nearly always reveals him for what he is” (unintentionally revealing his own gender blind spot).

“He tends to get not only what he deserves, but to find in his fate the reflection of his own strength and weakness.”

The fact there is no real Starmerism may have once been Starmer’s greatest strength, depressingly critical to his rise to power. But it now looks like his greatest weakness, just as depressingly critical to why that power has too often been wasted.

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