Tony Blair’s triumphant time as opposition leader was more than 25 years and several political eras ago. But it still casts a huge shadow over our politics. Tories fear a repeat of the 1997 election. Pollsters try to work out whether such a rare and pivotal event could soon happen again. Centre-left voters of a certain age remember the mid-90s as a time of steadily growing hope and then pure elation, before Labour politics gradually went back to its usual divisions and disappointments.
But perhaps the people most fixated by Blair are Keir Starmer and his inner circle. In his use of former Blair speechwriters such as Philip Collins and Peter Hyman; of old Blair lines such as “Labour is on your side”; former New Labour ministers as advisers, including Blair himself; New Labour-style focus groups and charm offensives towards business; revived Blairite policies such as the asbo; and former New Labour strategists, spin doctors, party bureaucrats, fundraisers and donors. In all these ways, Starmer’s leadership often feels like a tribute to a form of politics many voters under 40 won’t even remember.
Despite the passing of so much time, there are arguments in favour of this approach. New Labour in the 90s remains one of the best examples of a British opposition harrying a tired government, then converting handsome opinion poll leads into actual power. And given how few new tactical or policy ideas the Labour right has come up with since Blair’s leadership began to stall in the early 00s, perhaps Starmer has little option but to rummage around in the rusty New Labour toolbox. Judging by the unspectacular but steady improvement in his and Labour’s popularity and performance over the past 18 months, the old tools still work.
Yet there are also risks in this return to Blairism. One is that it provides Starmer’s critics on both the left and the right with further evidence of what they see as his inauthenticity. In his eight-year Commons career, he has already been a shadow minister under Jeremy Corbyn, a leadership candidate who promised to unite the party, and a leader who effectively expelled his predecessor from Labour in parliament despite Corbyn’s 40 years of dedication to his constituency and 10 consecutive large local majorities.
Starmer’s defenders say he has been on a journey. His critics say he has made a career, as a lawyer as well as a politician, by regularly discarding his principles. In that context, being so transparently influenced by Blair – who started out as a member of the Labour Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and ended up palling around with macho rightwingers such as George W Bush and Silvio Berlusconi – feels an appropriate choice, but possibly an unwise one.
Another potential problem with Starmer borrowing from Blair is that it highlights their different styles and abilities. Blair was a compelling speaker, especially in opposition, even when saying very little, with a youthful intensity, well-timed jokes and a command of rhythm, volume and dramatic repetition. Despite having been a successful barrister, as a politician Starmer does not make you listen, not even when he is saying something significant. He is 60 – almost 20 years older than Blair when he became leader – and there is a heaviness about him, from decades of absorbing crucial facts for court and holding big responsibilities such as leading the Crown Prosecution Service, an experience about which he regularly reminds us. Unlike Blair in his early years as leader, with his seductive zest and confidence, Starmer rarely makes being a politician look like much fun.
Then again, these are less fun times. In the 90s, Blair was offering to rule a country that had increased poverty and run down public services but also a rapidly growing economy, a popular culture in an expansive phase, with a boom in clubbing and British pop, and with few foreign enemies, thanks to the lull after the cold war. Today, Starmer faces a state and society with wider and deeper problems and a Tory government that will leave him with very little to build on, if he wins power. It’s striking that while Blair admired Thatcher – Britain “needed” her “industrial and economic reforms”, he writes in his memoirs – Starmer has almost nothing good to say about the past 13 years of Conservative rule. Brexit is the one Tory achievement he accepts, and then only for quite cynical electoral reasons.
In his speeches, Starmer sometimes uses language and arguments that, back in the 90s, New Labour would have regarded as too divisive, even faintly Marxist. “Britain won’t be better off just because we make the rich richer,” he said at last year’s Labour conference. In February, he called for “a new model for economic growth … where wealth is created everywhere, by everyone, for everyone”. The thought of his centrist speechwriters and other former New Labour operatives having to come up with, or at least accept and promote, these leftwing passages is quite gratifying. So is all Starmer’s talk about “working people” – a phrase Blair rarely used. In a typically cautious, half-disguised way, class and anti-elitism have become important in Starmer’s plan for the country, as they were more openly in Corbyn’s. Given a government that, even by Tory standards, is blatantly being run by and for the wealthy, it’s about time.
Will Starmer’s stern, semi-egalitarian politics resonate enough at the election and afterwards? The electorate’s mood is particularly hard to predict now, with inflation still high but likely to fall, some strikes called off but others continuing, and a winter of crisis giving way to an unsettled spring of optimistic Rishi Sunak solutions and erratic economic trends.
One danger for Starmer may be seeming too downbeat, just as the Tory voters he needs – often middle-aged or retired homeowners who are not that exposed to Britain’s long-term problems – become convinced by the government that things can only get better. New Labour’s slogan could be put to Conservative uses.
However, Starmer may not have to inspire as Blair once did in order to win. Since Labour overtook the Tories in the polls 18 months ago, its ratings have consistently been much higher than his. With or without a compelling Labour leader, Britain may have had enough of the Tories. At least for now.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
