Compromised to Death

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

In an unsurprising and desperate turn, Keir Starmer has once again adopted the position of his most ardent critics. First, this came in the form of cutting the benefit packages of vulnerable citizens as Tory ministers did before him. This turn was swiftly followed by a return to the austerity rhetoric of governments past, despite explicitly denouncing the policy only a few months prior. Most recently, Starmer has finally bitten the bullet in spectacular fashion and addressed the issue of immigration, in a speech that might come to represent a watershed moment in British political history.

The policy proposals announced by the PM are not radically out of step with the anti-immigration trends of the British right, and its language is reminiscent of a political landscape many would rather forget. Even Nigel Farage is careful to maintain a thin veil of respectability when he chooses to focus on ‘illegal’ migrants who do not work and who choose not to integrate into British society. He has been playing this game for decades after all. The content of the speech itself, given Starmer’s history of veering right on contentious issues, was not surprising. It is the rhetoric with which the government felt comfortable expressing this policy commitment that should raise eyebrows. For anyone following the state of current affairs in the UK somewhat closely, it was clear that a move on immigration such as this from Labour was imminent.

Placed within the context of broader European politics since 2015, Starmer’s ‘Island of Strangers’ is even less remarkable for its turn on immigration. Over the past 5 years, we have observed multiple instances of moderate European governments incorporating the anti-immigrant rhetoric of their right-wing opponents. Macron in France, Schultz and Mertz in Germany, and The Austrian People’s Party, are all examples of this trend. The consequence of this strategy of course, is that previously inflammatory rhetoric becomes mainstream, and the parties built upon these nativist positions surge in the polls. The UK is unlikely to be an outlier in this case.

Keir Starmer will also soon discover that being the leader of the incumbent party, who was previously the leader of the opposition for 4 years, and whose rhetoric is virtually indistinguishable from his predecessors’, makes it extremely difficult to convincingly adopt the talking points of an anti-establishment political movement. The evidence is clear on this point. Despite explicitly committing his government to tightening up immigration restriction in a desperate attempt to curb the incredible growing support for Reform UK, voters still see the Labour leader as more pro-immigration than against.

Fundamentally, Keir Starmer has not done enough to gain the political trust of the British people to make his policy positions credible, no matter how far they change in a direction that appears to resonate with a large proportion of British voters. His recent u-turn on the controversial winter-fuel cuts simply reinforces the idea among the British population that not only does Keir Starmer not stand for much, but he simply does not know what he is doing or why he is doing it.

Illustration By Will Allen/Europinion

In many ways, this loss of political credibility is exaggerated by Labour’s (and prior governments) more fundamental loss of economic credibility. Take for example the crown jewel of this government’s plan for the future, achieving economic growth. Imagining, for the sake of argument, that Starmer’s government was single-mindedly committed to this objective, and not also to its current assortment of conflicting ‘No. 1 Priorities’, many would still be left wondering how exactly a 2% boost to GDP would raise their standard of living.

As much as the economic policies of 14 years of conservative government are lambasted for good reason, this was a period in recent British history where the economy was growing at a stable average of 1.8% per year (2010-2019). Admittedly, this growth rate was half of that before the financial crash, and relatively lower than that of comparable developed countries, but it was a solid period of growth nonetheless. According to Starmer’s projections therefore, the country, and more importantly its citizens, must have been feeling year-on-year improvements in their standard of living during this period.

Clearly, this was not the case. In fact, ‘The decline in living standards over recent years has been stark – 7.5 million more people are living in households with inadequate incomes in 2022-23 than were in 2008-09’. In a similar vein, 24 million people in the UK now live below the Minimum Income Standard (MIS). Not to mention the eye-watering disparities in income which have only widened in recent years, a fact which cannot be solved by working to boost the GDP without asking who this growth in income will flow to. Indeed, it is now not an exaggeration to state that, barring those in the 97th percentile of incomes in the UK, British households across the income distribution are poorer than the developed country average. There is a deeper issue at play, and mindlessly banking a country’s future on the growth of its GDP is not enough to fix it.

Starmer’s loss of both political and economic credibility is perhaps a symptom of the situation he finds himself in, not a product of his own inherent spinelessness. Britain’s structural and institutional malaise is not unique, as I touched on earlier. It is simply a symptom of the fact that many voters in the liberal-democratic free-market West feel betrayed by the systems that promised stability and prosperity among the ruins of the Berlin Wall. As liberal democracy continues to default on its debts, many more will turn to the most appealing and radical political alternative on offer in a reenactment of a tale as old as time. Through compromise and servility, moderates will only accelerate their own demise.