When Keir Starmer assumed the Labour leadership two years ago, both the party’s left and right flanks feared that they were heading for a repeat of the Ed Miliband era. For the left, this meant a lack of a radical alternative to Tory rule; the right, meanwhile, was worried he would engage in a heretical repudiation of Blairite nostrums. Miliband’s tortured tenure as leader of the opposition reflected his own internal conflict between the radicalism of his Marxist father and his background as a New Labour adviser: his flirtation with an analysis of a broken economic system was not matched by the transformative policies required to fix it.
How appropriate, then, that it is Miliband himself – who concluded that his lack of boldness fatally undermined his own leadership – who has played a pivotal role in arming Starmer’s Labour with substantial policies. His influence could be seen in the party’s commitment to invest £28bn a year in a transition to a green economy, and to slash energy bills through the introduction of a windfall tax on fossil fuel profits. In Starmer’s conference speech, it manifested itself again: in the creation of a publicly run energy company that will own and operate renewable energy assets, and a sovereign wealth fund. Thanks to the determination of Labour’s transport secretary Louise Haigh, the party is officially committed to rail nationalisation, while her colleague Lisa Nandy has adopted a mantra of “council housing, council housing, council housing”.
