Why I won’t be voting for Keir Starmer
He’s set himself up to fail
A friend recently drew my attention to a recent piece in the Sunday Times by Mathew Syed. It’s one of those open letters that makes a plea for a radical new approach from the presumptive next Prime Minister. Syed’s letter is behind a paywall so I hope he won’t mind me reproducing a part of it here. Read the first few lines and you will get the basic idea.
Syed presents his ‘radical’ 5-point, 5-year plan to dig Britain out of its ‘deep hole’. The UK is, indeed, in a deep hole. Syed’s ideas are good and properly radical. But they are fatally flawed.
The holes in Syed’s plan are, first, it’s going to take a lot longer than 5 years. Second, his plans are nowhere near radical enough, or simply enough - a lot more than 5 ideas are needed. And, third, even if they are capable of turning things around - if I’m wrong - they stand no chance of implementation because you can’t be that radical having promised to be anything but.
Syed wants action on tax, particularly land tax, with a reform of Britain’s medieval approach to property ownership firmly in the frame. It is as repugnant as it is economically suicidal that, in 2024, two families and the King essentially own all of London.
The other targets for Syed are as obvious as they are urgent: the NHS, human rights, corruption and NIMBYism. All Great Ideas.
Michael Gove has just and tried to reform part of Britain’s wicked leasehold system of home ownership and failed in the face of vested interests. That’s how hard this is all going to be. Confronting vested interests is hard, exhausting and uses up part of your political capital every time you try. It is the political equivalent of getting into the ring with Mike Tyson - every day.
Here’s my response to my friend who asked me about Syed’s ideas:
Hi,
I won’t be voting Labour this time around. Two reasons, one general, one very specific
1. Absence of radicalism - absence of anything really. I understand all the arguments about getting power first, don’t do anything while your enemy comprises a circular firing squad. But this will prove to have been a big mistake.
Starmer, Reeves & Co. don’t give even a hint that the country is in a ‘1979’ moment. Whatever you thought about Thatcher, she was brave enough to say the country needed radical change. Her changes were not what we liked but at least she was honest enough, before gaining power, to acknowledge the need for radical reform. Things really were broken back then. They are broken now - I am struck by how many people say this, sotto voce, but, like Labour, they prefer to talk about something else.
Sayed in his article at least acknowledges that things are fundamentally broken. They are so broken that a list of even 5 radical ideas is not going to cut it. We need that national conversation first: to get people warmed up to the idea that big change is both necessary and will be to their advantage. That latter point is important: we are hard-wired to resist change and need to be persuaded of its need.
You will fail if you come to power and then start behaving radically, having promised you wouldn’t. My belief is that Starmer is going to be in big trouble within two years of gaining power.
Either he is, as he promises, going to do nothing. Or he is going to try and be radical without warning us - persuading everyone - first. Either way, he will fail.
Yes, land reform - especially its taxation - is badly needed. It is obscene that we still have leasehold (at all) and that so few families own so much. Everyone knows about the Grosvenor’s but Google ’The de Walden Estate’. It’s all so Medieval. The problem is land prices (and therefore house prices). Get them down.
More generally, we have to convince people that living off ‘economic rents’ is a very bad idea. We have far too many rentiers. A less formal way of expressing this idea is that we live in a winner takes all economy with far too many unproductive winners (that includes us by the way!).
Even more generally, wherever you see a vested interest, strike it down. That’s planning reform, the professions, big (and not so big) corporations, land owners, hospital porters etc. We have a few very comfortable firms, accountants, lawyers etc, all cruising along, all extracting monopoly (or quasi-monopoly) rents. They are so comfortable they resist all change and represent big barriers to growth.
Yes, the lack of economic growth is a big part of our malaise but it is only part. Our public square has been polluted by many things - 14 years of Tory rule, Brexit, social media, the Daily Mail etc. I don’t know how we are going to fix this: restoring a sense of trust in collective endeavour, trust in politics etc. The belief, grounded in considerable evidence, is that the system is rigged. Everybody feels on their own. Everybody feels that everybody else is in it solely for themselves. How on earth are we to change this with radicalism by stealth?
Even these relatively few ideas won’t be enough, such are the problems. But imagine a politician trying to this? It’s a three-term Parliament thing and you won’t be able to do it, even if you are inclined to try, without getting people on board first. To get people to journey with you, a little honesty is required. A lot of honesty actually.
2. Brexit
(This is my very specific, personal, beef with the current Labour Party.)
Saying nothing - the Labour Party’s official position - about Brexit is a moral and economic disgrace.
Brussels recently offered the UK a very limited opening up of free movement of people. The EU proposed a concession for younger people, such as those who want to avail of Erasmus-stye education schemes.
Labour’s official response: “No. Never. It’s Freedom of Movement by the back door”.
In my view, freedom of movement is one of the greatest, most civilising things Europe has done. In particular, it is simply a massive gift to working people to allow them to work in any country they choose. A party that claims to represents the working class has lost its moorings.
Rant over!
Chris
Great rant!