Keir Starmer has done an outstanding job in his first year as Labour leader

Much of the grumbling about Starmer’s leadership is simply the white noise of politics, writes John Rentoul

Happy first anniversary as Labour leader to Keir Starmer (Getty)

I’m sorry Keir Starmer doesn’t zing journalists’ socks off, but that is the wrong measure of an opposition leader’s ability to rebuild a party’s wrecked credibility. It might be more exciting for the press if Starmer were a charismatic preacher of the new Jerusalem, but there is no such person and the British people are disinclined to believe that there is such a place.

There is no one in the parliamentary Labour Party who could do a better job than Starmer, and he has done a reasonable job with the people at his disposal in a difficult historical situation.

Sometimes, politics is simple. At the moment, the only thing anyone cares about is vaccines, and the vaccination programme is going well, so Boris Johnson is popular. But Starmer’s dullness, his competence and his integrity stand him in good stead when politics is about other things, as it will be at the next election in 2023 or 2024.

He has made a few mistakes. I criticised his choice of an ultra-Remainer with a tasteless Twitter back-catalogue as the candidate in the Hartlepool by-election, but it seems that the Conservatives don’t expect to win it or they would have persuaded a stronger candidate of their own to stand.

He has a weak shadow cabinet, although that reflects the thinness of the talent that is available. It is notable that yesterday’s Times reported that his “rumoured desire” to appoint Rachel Reeves as shadow chancellor was blocked by Angela Rayner, the deputy leader. But I am not sure how much difference Reeves or Yvette Cooper would have made up against Rishi Sunak, a “centre-left” chancellor pumping huge sums of borrowed cash into the stricken economy.

Starmer has dealt effectively with the poisonous legacy of antisemitism from the Corbyn era, ably assisted by Corbynites including Jeremy putting themselves in the wrong and excluding themselves from positions of influence. And although Labour is lagging behind a vaccine-boosted Conservative Party in the opinion polls, remember that Labour was 24 points behind when Starmer took over a year ago today.

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Much of the grumbling about Starmer’s leadership is simply the white noise of politics. Starmer ought to be alarmed if anonymous shadow cabinet ministers weren’t quoted by The Times, complaining that “there needs to be more urgency”, or anonymous “critics” describing the leader’s team as “underpowered and inexperienced” as well as “aloof and intolerant of dissent”. That sounds like situation normal to me.

Of course, winning the next election is an improbably daunting task, not least because Labour starts from such a low base, but my view is that Starmer has done a heroic job of maximising the party’s chances.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator