Ready for power?: Sir Keir Starmer in Essex this morning, tie-less, sleeves rolled up, the messaging being he’s ready to lead the country. But what is he actually offering?
ANDREW FISHER looks at what the latest offering from Labour Party leader Keir Starmer might mean for Croydon
First it was his “10 Pledges”. Then came “Five Missions”. Today Keir Starmer unveiled “Six First Steps”.
Starmer may have eschewed Karl Marx, but he’s embraced Groucho: “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them… well, I have others!”
Starmer launched his first steps this morning in Purfleet in Essex, within the local authority boundaries of Thurrock Council, which issued a Section 114 notice after the Conservative-run authority there plunged them into financial ruin on a scale that dwarfs even cash-strapped Croydon’s failings.
According to figures from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Thurrock is the fourth most-indebted council in the country. Croydon didn’t even make the Top 10.
Parody policies: it didn’t take long for the political memes to appear
Labour took control of Thurrock Council in the local elections earlier this month, the political equivalent of winning a headache. The party hopes to take the parliamentary seat in the forthcoming general election.
But what might Starmer’s pledges mean for the long-suffering residents of Thurrock, and of Croydon?
The first was “tough spending rules, so we can grow our economy”. That almost certainly translates as there isn’t going to be any increase in local authority funding – which means Council Tax will continue to go up as we carry on paying more to get less. It’s bad news for social care, children’s services, libraries and all the other things, many of which are vital to our communities and which councils used to provide.
The second pledge was to cut NHS waiting lists with “40,000 more evening and weekend appointments” – though under questioning, Starmer couldn’t say when these 40,000 extra appointments would come on stream. Which is surely a problem if this is only a “first step”.
I’d also ask where the extra staff are coming from? Asking existing overworked NHS staff to do even more overtime is a recipe for more burnout and possible clinical errors.
The third pledge was the already launched commitment of a Border Security Command to “smash criminal gangs” that are trafficking asylum seekers across the English Channel.
To me, this smacks of the same kind of delusion of politicians pledging a “war on drugs”. The problem is the market – if people want something enough, they will find a way. If you ban it, you inevitably make that way more dangerous. And since there are no safe and legal routes from which people can claim asylum, they will therefore take unsafe routes.
But it sounds tough, and panders to the idea that Britain – which takes fewer refugees than the European average – should be immune from dealing with the global refugee crisis, much of which we are responsible for …
On its head: ‘first step’ GB Energy was launched at Labour’s party conference last year, yet green funding has been slashed
The establishment of Great British Energy – a publicly-owned energy producer – is welcome, and could help reduce bills from the profiteering privatised energy companies. However, the funding is insufficient to achieve the necessary scale. Starmer has already significantly diluted Labour’s green investment plans, from an original commitment of an additional £28billion down to just £5billion extra a year now.
Talk of “crackdowns on antisocial behaviour” and “tough new penalties for offenders” will be welcomed in parts of our borough. But they jar with the already existing backlog in courts and prisons that are overcrowded in the shambles of a justice system the Tories have created. The issue is not the lack of police – the numbers are broadly back to where they were pre-austerity – but about prioritisation: Who are you targeting? Who are you jailing? And what’s the capacity to administer justice?
Just a reminder: these were Starmers’s ’10 Pledges’ to Labour Party members from 2020
Finally, Starmer pledged to recruit 6,500 teachers by “ending tax breaks for private schools” – a just redistribution from privilege to the schools that educate 93% of our children. But the reason that the Government has not met its teacher recruitment target for years, and teachers are leaving the profession in record numbers, is because of falling real pay and rising workloads.
Starmer may have set out his six first steps today, but in government he will discover that giant leaps are needed. Today was sticking plaster politics, when Britain needs extensive surgery.
The country has been through the worst cost-of-living crisis on record. Child poverty is soaring, as is homelessness, NHS waiting lists have never been higher, low pay and insecure work is endemic; everywhere you look there is crisis: councils collapsing into bankruptcy, universities on the brink and shortages of nurses, GPs, dentists, social care workers, teachers…
People have watched Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak make five pledges last year and only achieve one of them. It was the one he and his Government had nothing to do with achieving and which was forecast to happen anyway: halving inflation.
The lack of trust in politics isn’t about cynicism or apathy. It’s real-life experience. Whether in Katharine Street or Downing Street, we’ve been let down by politicians, their broken promises, corruption and dishonesty.
Restoring faith in politics will only be achieved by politicians who are honest and get things done.
Will Keir Starmer’s six small steps give people faith?
From 2015 to 2019, Andrew Fisher was the Labour Party’s Director of Policy under Jeremy Corbyn. Fisher is also the author of The Failed Experiment – and how to build an economy that works, and now writes columns for InsideCroydon, the i newspaper and is a regular pundit on BBC and Sky News programmes
Andrew Fisher’s recent columns:
- The shifts below the waterline that require action from all sides
- May 2’s election day will show how bad things are for Tories
- How myth of shared ownership has made housing crisis worse
- There’s good reason politicians are more unpopular than ever
- If you have a news story about life in or around Croydon, or want to publicise your residents’ association or business, or if you have a local event to promote, please email us with full details at inside.croydon@btinternet.com
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
Ten Pledges
Nine Lies (sic)
Eight maids a milking
Seven shades of shite
Six First Steps
Five Missions
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Three Blind Mice
Two’s company
One nation, one people, one leader
Zero principles
I agree that Starmer’s latest list is a bit unimaginative, but Red Andy needs to accept that his old boss isn’t coming back and no one else is going to deliver the pure-ish Marxist agenda he so obviously wishes for. Labour is stuck with centrist Bliar policies and that’s it
These are the sorts of sentiments from Starmer which could as easily come from Sunak or the Lib Dems or any other party. What is there in this that actually inspires anyone to go out and (and with the now necessary proof of identity) actually vote Labour? There is nothing about dealing with issues which immediately affect peoples’ lives such as being able to get somewhere to live at a reasonable price or rent.
Surely what people want to have is a vision of a hope for a better future. All Starmer offers here is the same old reheated thin gruel we’ll get from all the others who want us to vote for them. It is just extremely boring and shows no imagination.
Nigel Farage (remember him?) hit the nail on the head when he said, after this latest lacklustre performance, ‘he’s Blair without the flair’
Some might describe Farage as Hitler without the moustache.
Apologies, I misspelled Bliar.
Jeremy Corbyn presented a ‘vision’ that attracted many. He could not though show the political skills needed to get elected viz compromise and respect for those with slightly different views. His dogmatic approach certainly stuck to his principles but, in the end, he was as effective as King Canute in stemming the tide ( of capitalism).
Hm, “compromise and respect for those with slightly different views” – how’s that working out for Starmer in the wake of the purge of Abbott and other lefties??