WThe focus group opinion was reportedly clear. Labour’s Keir Starmer is uninspiring. The economy is not in desperate need of new management. The world is certainly in turmoil. But there is one message he made sure to get across from Starmer’s podium on Wednesday. “Change”.
Rishi Sunak has been a decidedly less bad chancellor than his recent predecessors. Eighteen months ago, he was given perhaps the toughest job of any post-war official. The closest parallel was in 1963, when Douglas Home inherited the disastrous Macmillan government for a year. Sunak faced a second-rate cabinet, a dysfunctional economy and an impoverished public sector. It would have required a political giant to succeed. He has at least struggled to act responsibly, honestly, and with good intentions.
The definition of a democracy is not to vote its leaders into office; Russia and China pretend to do so. Democracy requires that they too be voted out. Most constitutions impose term limits on rulers to ensure renewal of power. The issue is not the quality of government, but openness to government renewal. It is Tennyson’s plea, “May the great world forever turn in the grooves of ringing change.”
No one can accuse the political club of failing to change. A decade later, two of Britain’s longest serving prime ministers, Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, lost public patience by not voting for them. Then the trauma of Brexit led to five leaders in just eight years. Unlike the United States, the British constitution at least allows mistakes to be quickly corrected. Boris Johnson was brought down by a handful of MPs. pollTruss lasted 49 days. Trump enjoyed four years.
Sunak is betting against change. In announcing the election, he argued that national security requires continuity – “the strongest possible defence” against a world “more dangerous than at any time since the end of the Cold War”. He also hopes voters will see him as the restorer of “economic stability”. Starmer can counter this only with a promise not of different policies but of a change in leadership – an end to “debilitating political chaos”.
This shows how lost we are of the days when Labour and the Conservatives ran on different ideological platforms. Now there is hardly any talk of the public sector versus the private sector, privatisation versus nationalisation, or free markets versus price controls. Ministers and shadow ministers speak the same language, as if they came from the same place. PPE CourseThe only criticism they can level at each other is a gentle exchange of insults.
In this way, politics provides voters with empty intellectual arguments. Public services and institutions are governed by a consensus that appears to be failing on every front. Competence is more important than ideology. In other words, politics is not about policies, but about the people who entrust politics to them. Voters cannot judge how competent a minister is, so they have no choice but to wait and see through trial and error.
When Gordon Brown entered number 10 as prime minister in June 2007, he tweeted to the cameras: “Let’s keep changing.” But he had been finance minister for 10 years. What changes occurred in his heart? The answer lies not in policy, but only in the Prime Minister’s answer.
Boris Johnson took office in 2019 and quickly won the election on his personal popularity. He brought a charm and sense of humour, which British politics had long lacked. In the end, it turned out that he was unable to run an eel stall. Without a policy choice between him and Labor, voters had to judge the new leader on his performance in office. The result was fatal.johnson’s popularity has plummeted From close to 70% to less than 30%. Populist politics is a strange kind of politics. It cried out for more change.
Change is both an opportunity and a burden for Starmer. His slogan is entirely negative. It’s not Sunak, it’s not the Conservatives, it’s not the last 14 years. It would be a release from years of Conservative backstabbing, division and dishonesty. Like Blair in 1997, Starmer is likely to inherit an improved economy and the possibility of better times ahead. But his main handicap from a long period in opposition is his lack of ministerial experience. Blair’s government disastrously supported Thatcher’s privatisation of water, rail and care homes, because he had no ministerial colleagues who knew. Starmer may realise that the mess in public services is not the fault of Conservative incompetence but of structural flaws that urgently need to be righted. Or his criticism of Sunak will come back to haunt him and show that the country needs change.
Starmer initially expected a honeymoon and a sense of a new dawn. We saw that in Blair’s “first 100 days” and in Cameron’s coalition government. There was a brief respite from political name-calling and shaming. It was a time when new faces appeared on our TV screens and new political discourse emerged. The BBC no longer needed to add a smear of opposition-bashing to every government announcement. Politics was eerily euphoric.
The challenges remain the same, of course, but their character is different. A new club will come to power. We have only to look at the world today to see that this is the most precious gift of democracy.
