Our interview with Sir Keir Starmer

Labour politicians are not supposed to have a high opinion of their Conservative rivals. “Lower than vermin”, was the judgment of Nye Bevan, a post-war Labour minister. But in an interview with The Economist on December 3rd Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, admitted something striking should Labour lose power: “If there is a Conservative government, I can sleep at night.” A right-wing populist Reform UK government, however, “is a different proposition”.

Sir Keir foresees a crisis. The threat for Britain, according to the prime minister, is not the Tories. It is a potential Reform government that would “do huge damage to our country, to our society, to our global standing, and destroy much of our country”. Polls point to a government led by Nigel Farage. In Sir Keir’s telling, this would ruin Britain economically, rip its society apart and potentially break the West. His own oft-struggling government is, in his analysis, the last chance for the centre. This is the moment. Is Sir Keir the man?

The effects of a Reform government would not only be felt in Britain, warns Sir Keir. “Reform is a party that is pro-Putin or Putin-neutral,” he says. Its former Welsh leader was recently sentenced to ten and a half years in prison for accepting pro-Russian bribes. “Pro-Russian interference in our democracy…is for real,” says the prime minister. Britain leads the coalition of the willing, a gang of 35 countries helping Ukraine stave off Russia. “There is no way on earth that the UK could be part of that configuration with Nigel Farage as prime minister,” says Sir Keir.

In Washington some around Donald Trump would be happy to see Mr Farage in that job. This is no bother to Sir Keir. “I’m a pragmatist,” he says. “I live in the world as it is.” Can Britain rely on America to fight on behalf of Nato allies? A flat “yes”. The portrayal by some in the White House of Britain as an isle of nightmares, overridden by immigrants and rape gangs, and where people are jailed for posts online, is tutted away by the prime minister. At times, however, he says they have a point. Their idea that Europe has not spent enough on its own defence is “probably right”.

Jolting Britain out of its economic malaise is the main shield against a Reform government in Sir Keir’s telling. Real wages have barely risen since the financial crisis, a period that runs from austerity through Brexit to the pandemic and the Ukraine shock. Living standards must improve. How though? Britain can trade more. The state can play its part, first by eliminating trade barriers via sweeping deals and by the fruits of its own wheeling and dealing, which Sir Keir proudly rattles off. Some warships? Yours for £10bn, Norway. Some Typhoon fighters? Whatever you ask for, Turkey.

Stronger ties with Europe would help. Sir Keir hopes to “iteratively get the relationship closer”. The direction is clear. But there will be no big leaps, such as rejoining the customs union—much to the chagrin of Labour’s fed-up voters. A steady, slow process is on offer, on individual areas such as energy supply. In discrete, regular summits, the ratchet is being cranked.

The agenda becomes thinner the closer Sir Keir comes to Britain’s domestic policy. The main thing investors want, in the prime minister’s eyes, is “stability and certainty”. To its credit, Sir Keir’s government is making it easier to build in Britain. Beyond that, a reform agenda is absent. Britain’s budget on November 26th was a case in point. It avoided spending cuts, added padding to Britain’s fiscal position, but beyond that consisted of goodies, such as cheaper energy bills and frozen rail fares, as well as a more generous—but still resolutely unreformed—welfare system.

Sir Keir’s agenda in government does not match the scale of the challenge. He agrees that Britain is at a pivot point—a 1945 or a 1979. Those moments had a leader who seized it, in Sir Keir’s telling. Clement Attlee, the Labour prime minister, had to “rebuild the country”. Margaret Thatcher set out to “break the mould”. Each phrase is pithy enough to go on an election placard. What would go on Sir Keir’s bumper sticker? “Our mission of national renewal, renewing our country, understanding our country for what it is, which is a society of reasonable, pragmatic, compassionate people who would actually help each other out if they had half the chance to do so.” As an example of Starmerese, there is no better; as a philosophy to keep the centre together or indeed to inspire, it needs work.

Accepting that the Conservatives are, in effect, allies against Reform may backfire. Some in Reform refer to “the Uniparty”—a grotty consensus between Britain’s mainstream parties, which has led to ruin. Mr Farage would be delighted that Sir Keir sleeps soundly at the thought of their centre-right rivals in office. Many in Labour would be disturbed. But the prime minister knows there is a bigger battle at hand, even if Labour’s squabbling government does not always act like it. Therein lies the paradox of Sir Keir: a man who can articulate the size of the moment, yet still does not quite know how to meet it. ■