Keir Starmer is using this morning’s cabinet meeting to underline the message he has been sending to more junior ministers over the past few days: he’s not going without a fight. Part of his argument is that he’s got loads to do, which must come as a surprise to anyone who read the King’s Speech.
One of the big things Starmer wants to show his party he can do is address the hot-button issue of children’s access to social media, first with his threat to tech firms yesterday that they have three months to stop children being able to send or see explicit content.
Starmer and Burnham are both symptoms of Labour’s big problem, which is that the party really doesn’t know what it wants to do
It is striking, though, that Starmer is moving now on this when one of his ex-ministers, Jess Phillips, accused him of dragging his feet for months on the matter when she resigned. Phillips was praised yesterday in the Commons for her work, with Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood telling MPs that Starmer’s ultimatum was a ‘landmark moment in the protection of children in this country.’ She added: ‘I will end by paying tribute to the woman who has pushed for this harder than anyone else, my hon. friend and former colleague in the Home Office, the Member for Birmingham Yardley. The children of this country will be safer as a result of her work.’
Given Mahmood was one of the ministers pushing only a few weeks ago for Starmer to set out a timetable to go, her tribute to Phillips (and lack of mention of the Prime Minister) did more to underline that the government doesn’t really achieve much without being pushed about by its MPs. It did not suggest Starmer has a grip on what he wants to do.
It is still not clear whether Starmer does have that grip, other than when it comes to staying in office. But then again, it should be becoming increasingly clear to Andy Burnham’s supporters that neither does their candidate, given he has already changed his tune on the EU, immigration, protections for biological sex and his old foes in the bond markets.
Starmer and Burnham are both symptoms of Labour’s big problem, which is that the party really doesn’t know what it wants to do. On big issues (particularly the ones listed above), it still senses that it is out of step with the electorate but needs to at least give the appearance of agreeing with voters. The problem is that voters see through that pretence – and the pretence tends to crumble anyway when Starmer tries to push a policy past his backbenchers and they refuse to back it. That’s why going after tech giants is much easier for the Prime Minister because it’s an issue that Labour MPs feel vaguely they need to do something about, but haven’t really formed a strong opinion on what precisely should be done.
Starmer is in survival mode at the moment, and seems to be learning from Gordon Brown. His ‘I am going to fight to win’ claim to his ministers is straight out of the Brown playbook. Brown ended up similarly lurching from one short-term solution to another. In a particularly vulnerable moment as Prime Minister, colleagues recall him rejecting a strategic idea with ‘I’ve got to survive to Wednesday!’ and Starmer is in a similar mindset. The problem is that so is his wider party, including the frontrunner to succeed him.
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