People like profound-seeming contradictions, so I’ll begin with this: the general election that has to be called in the next year both is and isn’t significant.
It is significant because Labour almost certainly1 will replace the Conservatives as the governing party. While lefties grouse that Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak are basically the same, this isn’t true. In personality, family background, company kept and working experience, the two men are very different. They will make different decisions on how the country is run, and some of these will matter.
But complaints from the fringes are right in one sense. Stylistically, both Sunak and Starmer are ‘sensibles’. They appeal to the kind of people who buy tickets to see the Rest is Politics live, united like hosts Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart by an opposition to the ‘populist’ turn of the Brexit years.
I’ve long been sceptical of the populist label due to how it is used by critics against anyone who doesn’t confirm to a view of ‘normal’ politics. In his memoir Politics on the Edge, Stewart provides something of a negative definition in his description of David Cameron’s premiership:
“Cameron had been diligent, truthful, and respectful of Parliament, courts and the opposition, and embraced a pluralist, socially liberal conservatism. […] He was respectful towards the permanent Civil Service. He did not attempt to stir identity politics or culture wars. He was in rhetoric and substance a pluralist.”
This obviously can’t capture everything of Cameron2. Certainly, he was not respectful to Ukip, whom he termed “fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists mostly”. You can argue that in backing referendums on Scottish independence and British membership of the EU he did more to stir identity politics and culture wars than any other prime minister. And Stewart notes that Cameroon whips gave no space for MPs to scrutinise government bills in Parliament – some pluralism.
Being sensible can often be more about vibe than effect, in other words. And moderation, like alleged populism, can also be exclusionary, as we’ve seen from both parties of late. The return of Cameron as foreign secretary as Suella Braverman was inched out of the Home Office was one sign of this. Sensibles celebrated the sidelining of an enemy.
Over in Labour, Starmer has been dispensing with his party’s leftwing liabilities, notably in former leader Jeremy Corbyn and his key ally Diane Abbott. There’s some poetry in the fact that both these anti-racists were undone in racism scandals, but I suspect Starmer would have found some other excuse to marginalise them eventually.
I actually approve of these moves, since I regard Corbyn as a crank and am grateful he never got to run British foreign policy. And in another symptom of sensibleness, I would like Starmer to be prime minister. Him and the Labour partly look better placed to fix the structural problems Britain faces (housing shortages, creaky public services – even immigration, on which the Tories are supposed to be more hawkish). Like most people, I would like the country to be run properly.
Yet while wanting that, I think it’d be a mistake to return to the managerial attitudes of the New Labour and Cameroon era. For all the touting of liberal democracy, plenty of manager-backing sensibles are contemptuous of consulting the public. (See, for example, the surge in anti-democratic sentiment after British voters chose to leave the EU.)
Right now the British public is chiefly concerned about the economy, health and immigration – fairly standard fare. But if you look abroad, the animal spirits that sensibles are less comfortable with are still in evidence.
Marine Le Pen, formerly of France’s National Front, could well be the country’s next president, while in the Netherlands the far right Geert Wilders’ party is seeking to lead the next coalition government, having won the most seats in a recent general election.
I hope such cases remind politicians that there is more to politics than just managing the economy and hoping the public keep their noses out. Yes, people want affordable houses and a working health service. But it’s not all they want.
Loyalty test. In a return to Grocer themes, I wrote for CapX about the competition probe into supermarket loyalty pricing (linking special offers to loyalty cards) that has become common in the past year. The rolling investigation into whether food retailers are ripping people off seems unjustified to me – it’s a competitive industry – and a distraction from more fundamental issues about British food security.
There’s a piece to be written on whether government or opposition has ever recovered from similar poll numbers that currently face Rishi Sunak.
Stewart is plenty critical of the former prime minister elsewhere in the book.
Like Thanos I think a Labour win is inevitable. I think I’ll be voting Reform as I just can’t bring myself to vote Labour.
If they do get in I hope they prove me wrong.