FTI Consulting UK Public Affairs Snapshot- Keir Starmer: The man leading the Labour Renaissance

Four years ago, Keir Starmer addressed the Labour Party as its new leader. Addressing head-on the difficulties Labour was undergoing at the time, he made it clear that “we must go forward with a vision of a better society… that will require bravery and change in our party as well… we have to face the future with honesty…[otherwise] we’re failing in our historic purpose”.

The world looked like a very different place in April 2020 – two weeks into the first Covid lockdown, before the crises in Ukraine and the Middle East, and with Boris Johnson’s Conservatives commanding majority in the Commons still reflected in opinion polls. In each of the years since then, the Labour Leader has faced many high-profile challenges to which he has had to adopt a robust approach – whether that be addressing a looming investigation into institutional racism by the Equalities Watchdog, or barring his predecessor from being a Labour candidate ever again. It has taken him – and Labour – on quite the journey.

Starmer-ism

Starmer is an unusual Leader of the Labour Party. Many in the Shadow Cabinet have either worked their way up the ranks of their trade unions or cut their teeth in student politics and worked in and around the Labour movement. Starmer, on the other hand, came into politics comparatively late in his career and views politics in a far more managerial way than many of his colleagues. Much of his approach derives from his time as the Director of Public Prosecutions, where he was responsible for the running and smooth operating of a substantive Government department in the Crown Prosecution Service.

The changes he made in the organisation during his tenure are likely to inform the approach he may take in Government – notably his reforms of CPS guidelines which helped boost conviction rates for sexual abuse cases, driving efficiencies right across the department which were praised at the time by the former Conservative MP and Attorney General, Dominic Grieve KC. These reforms showed several key tenets of Starmer-ism: work methodically, build consensus, don’t be afraid to change the machinery, and ensure you can demonstrate the impact of what you’ve done.

In that vein, Starmer set himself his first challenge as reforming the party internally. Each year, Starmer and his closest advisers shifted the narrative, moving Labour away from focusing on the policy areas it was traditionally comfortable talking about, such as NHS funding, social inequality and workers’ rights, to other areas viewed as being more within the domain of the Conservative Party, like the economy, defence and immigration policy. That was not an easy job, but the electoral dividends have largely proved to his colleagues and sceptics that this was the right direction to take.

Since his election, Starmer has continued to distance himself from his predecessor and take on his biggest critics from the left of the party. In 2021, Labour faced setbacks in the local elections and lost the Hartlepool by-election to the Conservatives, Starmer was very close to breaking and resigning as leader, but his team were persistent in emphasising that for it to get better it had to get worse first. Later that year at the party’s annual conference, news emerged that his Shadow Employment Rights Secretary, Andy McDonald, had resigned over the party’s refusal to support a £15 per hour minimum wage, provoking left-wing activists to heckle his conference speech. This was his moment to publicly demonstrate that he would not be cowed by criticism from the hard left of his party, and Starmer’s response has continued to be his raison d’être: that it is better to be changing lives than shouting slogans in opposition.

Starmer has often emphasised his understanding of the financial challenges an incoming Labour Government will face and the importance of maintaining fiscal credibility. Assisted by his Chief of Staff Sue Gray, formerly a senior civil servant in the Cabinet Office, he will have strong views on how the machinery of Government needs to be reformed to ensure that Labour can deliver on its policy priorities. This is most evident in Starmer’s rhetoric about ending short-term sticking plaster politics and his view that Britain needs a mission-driven government. His views are well surmised in his promise to overhaul Britain’s planning regime, an issue he considers to have been avoided by too many politicians in Westminster due to its short-term political ramifications but he holds entirely responsible for plunging Britain into a housing crisis which has crippled productivity.

Being relatively new to politics, Starmer is less wound up in the machinations of who is up and who is down in Westminster. This is both a blessing and a curse. Unlike most of his cohort elected in 2015, Starmer was one of few new Labour MPs who weren’t fully part of the Westminster bubble and had very little acolytes or sworn enemies waiting for him on the green benches. This has led to criticism that his approach to politics has been too cautious and sometimes missed short-term political wins. That circumspection – whilst at times useful in allowing events to take their course  without running commentary – has sometimes led to portrayals of indecision.

Nevertheless, Starmer’s colleagues often praise his ability to listen, delegate and trust his team to deliver – a quality I have seen up close in my two years on the Labour Party’s National Executive Committee. That’s why he sees the growing media profile of his Shadow Cabinet as a strength rather than a risk to his leadership, making his way of working more collegiate than predecessors who have sometimes be loath to share the limelight with others.

Business and Union relations

Perhaps the most profound shift in the Labour Party between 2020 and 2024 has been its approach to business. Right from the start of his leadership, Starmer set out to rebuild relations with the business community, assisted by his Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and Shadow Business Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds. This has seen more business leaders endorse Labour’s mission-led plan for government, partly as a result of industry’s reading of the country’s desire for change, but with many in the business community saying the Party now recognises that successful businesses are crucial for providing the jobs and prosperity we need, and having shown a willingness to listen and engage.

Starmer’s rhetoric around business engagement has often echoed the approach taken by President Biden in the US and Prime Minister Albanese in Australia – both left-of-centre leaders who have adopted much of the Conservative pro-business playbook and overlayed it with social democratic principles such as interventionist industrial strategy and enhanced employment rights.

As part of this, Labour has promised to implement a new employment bill – christened the New Deal for Working People – within the first 100 days of taking office. The proposed legislation would ban the controversial practice of firing and rehiring staff, outlaw zero-hour contracts, and strengthen rights in relation to sickness absence.

The plan has found significant support from all 11 trade unions affiliated to the party who have, to date, been broadly supportive of Starmer. However, their attention will now turn to ensuring that if Labour is successful at the general election, these promises are kept. Unions will likely lean heavily on those new MPs selected to run in no small part because of their backing, each expected to lead scrutiny from the new government’s own backbenches.

Tensions are also likely to emerge around the topic of renationalisation. Whilst Labour has committed to bringing rail franchises back into public sector operation, there is already increased pressure to look at institutional reform in the water sector amid a public scandal linked to chronically poor environmental performance coupled with serious concerns about the financial health of major suppliers. Labour has consistently used this to highlight the failure of government, regulators and industry, amplified effectively by the campaigner and former pop star Fergal Sharkey, who took a star turn at the podium during Labour’s 2022 annual conference. You do not have to scratch very far beneath Labour’s surface to find advocates for renationalisation, though Starmer and Reeves are alive to the potential cost to the taxpayer from enacting any such approach.

International

Starmer knows there is no great appetite amongst voters, particularly those who abandoned the party in 2019, to reignite the debates on Europe that have framed 14 years of Conservative government. To date, Labour’s strategy has largely been to avoid Brexit as an election topic, declaring the matter resolved. In government, Starmer will instead focus on making Brexit as much as a success as it can be, seeking improved trading relations with the EU as part of a review of the 2020 Trade and Cooperation Treaty five years on, while preserving the institutional freedoms returned to Westminster. However, like any negotiation, it will take two to tango – and it remains unclear that there is much appetite in Brussels to revisit and issue whose currency has long since been superseded.

On Ukraine, Starmer’s resolute backing of the Government’s military and financial aid will translate into a continuation of current policy; Kyiv will inevitably be among the first foreign capitals that Starmer visits as Prime Minister and there will be no thawing of relations with Russia without material change in circumstance on the ground. Expect European collective security, commitment to NATO and defence spending to be higher on the agenda than any previous incoming Labour Prime Minister – not that these are areas where spending pressures won’t also be felt.

The Israel and Gaza conflict is nevertheless a much more politically fraught situation, and Starmer’s initial stance resulted in more than half of Labour MPs voting against the party whip. Whilst Starmer’s position has adapted as the conflict has evolved, we can expect this to remain a politically sensitive area for him. With the Government refusing to bend to calls to halt the export of arms to Israel, Labour has yet to declare an alternative position. If the government is forced to disclose the legal advice guiding its policy position, Starmer will have to take a view, conscious that the collateral impact will be his to deal with post election. Of course, it goes without saying that further developments in the Middle East could change the narrative further.

Another impending challenge is the potential re-election of Donald Trump in the US, a man whose personality and politics are seemingly far removed from those of Starmer. But relations with the White House have helped to define the premiership of many prime ministers – Labour and Conservative – and indifference or hostility to the ‘Special Relationship’ would be an unthinkable departure for UK diplomacy, particularly if NATO unity was threatened by a radical revaluation on American support for Ukraine. With an autumn election widely mooted, this risk may materialise or dissipate just as the UK also heads to the ballot box. As much as anyone this side of the Atlantic, Starmer will be longing for a Biden victory.

Managing victory

Perhaps the greatest challenge Starmer will face is managing what, if current polling is to be believed, will be a very large number of colleagues – many of whom will be new to Parliament, some of whom will be considerably more left-wing, and most of whom will be firmly on the back benches for the immediate future, may prove to be a recipe for trouble.

So far, Starmer’s management of his Party – and in particular the oversight of the choice of Parliamentary candidates – has been decisive to the point of ruthlessness. Inevitably, as the realities of government approach, tensions will begin to show. Even despite Labour’s strong lead, the increasingly volatile nature of politics means that external factors ahead of the election can still shift the dial and a Labour victory, however inevitable the idea might currently seem, is not guaranteed.

But there is little doubt that the Labour Party of 2024 is in an immeasurably stronger place than the Labour Party of 2020. Starmer and his team have been in the driving seat of these changes and have successfully demonstrated the Party’s renewed appetite for government, with the hard choices that entails. Every indication is that Starmer’s journey has a long way still to run.

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