In January, as the economic storm clouds lingered over Westminster, like a gigantic Monty Python-style anthracite boot, I spent a bit of time with the people looking after Sir Keir Starmer. They were doing what all parties do at times like this when they think they might be in with a sniff of government, namely reaching out to those members of the press who they think might be useful. Or persuadable. Or potentially influential. Or frankly — especially in Starmer’s case — just mildly curious.
The thing I took away from these negotiations was that their biggest fear was that the economy might not collapse in the way everyone had been predicting it would.
The fear wasn’t just palpable; it practically had its own tattoo.
“It wouldn’t be a terrible thing for it to falter for a period,” my contact said, rather shamefacedly. “If you get my drift, of course.”
Currently, their wish looks like it’s going to be granted — even if the rest of Europe is leaning to the Right — although as a team they are obviously hyper aware of appearing as though they are taking rather too much for granted. But success in next year’s general election is obviously something that is becoming a reality.
The election is a long way off but considering what’s happened in Scotland, considering the way in which the Tory in-fighting continues to seriously dent Rishi Sunak’s calm, competent exterior, the lingering media obsession with Partygate, the price of cheese and a concern among the Tory faithful that Sunak might not be “Surrey” enough, the fight increasingly looks as though it’s Starmer’s to lose. He and his party have yet to convince the City that they’re capable of sound economic sense (twas ever thus), but as the incumbents seem to be making such a right old hash of it, the mood has already started to change: surely they couldn’t be any worse? Could they?
When he became Labour leader, Starmer pledged to make Brexit work — but time is a great healer
The echo chamber gets bigger every day: Maybe the time has come to give them a chance. If this really is the case, then the past 13 years of Conservative rule will be defined by one thing and one thing only — their inability to keep us in the European Union. Brexit won’t go away — at least not yet — but in the history books it will be the most obvious nugget to use to highlight the party’s achievements since 2010. It won’t be our support for Ukraine, the immigration crisis, Boris’s larger-than-life personality, or even the ramifications of Covid. It will be the Tories’ perennial bugbear, Europe.
If Labour do get in, as well as wrestling both austerity and NHS reform, it will be interesting to see how they choose to contextualise Brexit. And a lot of that will be driven by the media. When he became Labour leader, Starmer pledged to make it work, but time is a great healer. Will he continue to use it to beat up the reframed opposition? Will they carefully try to recalibrate it or give it its own cross-party taskforce? Could they begin to give it another name? (That’s something that could keep an ad agency going for the first few months of a Labour government, rebranding Brexit!) For the time being, while Starmer is in election mode, they almost certainly won’t mention it at all. Whatever they do, the press will be hawkeyed and keen to grass them up for any sketchily drawn reinterpretation of its basic principles. Because that’s the kind of thing that we do.
Three years ago, as we were still in the throes of the first lockdown, I had a call from a good friend of mine, a mordant Bulgarian who spends most of his time in Sofia, managing his vast telecoms business. After spending a considerable amount of time comparing our new realities, and in particular a developing narrative concerning a radical change in working practices, he asked me a simple question.
“I read all the British media every day, and it’s impossible to read anything that isn’t about Covid,” said Spas. “It’s literally the only thing anyone writes about now…” — a beat — “… so what happened to Brexit?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” I said, a little too easily. “Brexit doesn’t sell newspapers anymore.” I wonder if it will under a Labour government.
