Keir Starmer is looking ahead to an election – hence his political rethink

The image Starmer wants to project is that he is leading his party, even if it means causing a stir by revising his policy pledges, writes Sean O’Grady

The Labour leader is publicly discarding some of his own personal manifesto promises (PA)

It is one thing to execute a U-turn in government, when real-world forces and exigencies of the moment force a humiliating change in course; but quite another to do so quite voluntarily whilst still in opposition.

After all, far away from the tough choices poised in office, opposition leaders can have much more leeway to make extravagant, uncosted promises based on heroic economic assumptions (rather as Liz Truss, a sort of leader of the internal opposition in her own party, is doing now).

Not so Keir Starmer. He is behaving as if he is already in government, no doubt to remind and persuade doubtful voters that it is in fact he, and not Rishi Sunak or Truss, who is supposed to be the “alternative prime minister”. And a radical and decisive one at that.

Quite unprompted, though not entirely surprising, Starmer is now publicly discarding some of his own personal manifesto promises, upon which he was elected party leader in 2020. In Liverpool earlier in the week, Starmer backed his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’ disparaging remarks about taking key sectors into public control: “To be spending billions of pounds on nationalising things, that just doesn’t stack up against our fiscal rules.”

In supporting her, Starmer stated that he would not be “ideological” about placing rail, water and energy back into public ownership. He has now confirmed that stance, although he has said on the issue of rail: “[It] is probably different from the others because so much of our rail is already in public ownership. That is what I mean about not being ideological about it.”

Indeed, Starmer has even appeared to widen the scope of what he wants, suggesting that the vast post-pandemic public debt will possibly constrain other policies as well: “A lot has happened in the last two years. We’ve been through Covid, we have debt on a scale we’ve not seen for a long long time.”

Asked on the Today programme if “you’re saying there are things you promised when you ran for leader, that because of changed circumstances you are now not promising”, Starmer responded: “Yes… the financial situation has changed. The debt situation has changed.”

Thus, many of Starmer's leadership manifesto may be dumped, even though he'll be accused of betrayal and being no more trustworthy than Boris Johnson. Starmer is able to alter direction in a way he hasn’t previously been able to for two closely interrelated reasons: the collapse of the Johnson government; and his own electoral and polling success. That has lent him much power.

Indeed, the totemic shift on public ownership, and the reversal of a previous personal vow recalls the way Tony Blair, when running for leader, promised not to change clause IV of Labour’s 1918 constitution – which famously committed the movement to the “common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange” (though the exact formulation varied through the years). Not long after he became leader, however, Blair abandoned it, substituting some airy and unmemorable third way rhetoric instead (which survived the Corbynista revolution). In doing so, Blair both removed a traditional Tory attack line and won his first battle in a longer campaign to rebuild the party into an election-winning machine. It had eluded one of his illustrious reforming predecessors, Hugh Gaitskell, in 1960, and it was the clearest of signals that Labour really had changed.

Starmer, consciously or otherwise, may be doing something similar now.

The U-turn has caused a predictable stir, and one that illustrates that Starmer doesn’t enjoy the absolute authority over his party that Blair had in the 1990s. An official party spokesman has spun an almost cakeist line, in trying to reconcile the current Starmer-Reeves attitude with their past policies: “We are pragmatic about public ownership as long as it sits within our fiscal rules – a point Rachel was underlining in the interview by referencing this framework. For example, we know there is a positive role for rail in public ownership.”

Others were less accommodating to their leader’s change of mind. The shadow transport secretary, Louise Haigh, tweeted: “Labour is committed to public ownership of rail and putting the public back in control of our bus network to drive down prices, improve services and meet net zero.”

The shadow transport minister, Sam Tarry, added: “Just to be absolutely 100 per cent crystal clear – this is the Labour Party position on the public ownership of rail.” In the past, the backsliding from the nationalisation pledge has also met resistance from former leader and now shadow business secretary Ed Miliband, though he’s quiet for the moment.

For the record, this is what the Labour leader promised in 2020: “Common ownership. Public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders. Support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water; end outsourcing in our NHS, local government and justice system.”

Claims that Starmer has torn up all of his 10 pledge manifesto are wide of the mark: he’s still committed to providing “effective opposition to the Tories” and “equality”, obviously, but the increasingly revisionist line he and Reeves are taking suggests that an even cleaner break with the Corbyn years may well be implemented by the time the party faces the electorate again, next year or in 2024. The freedom to manoeuvre is opening up – and closing down on the Tory side, insistent on honouring the 2019 manifesto at all costs.

The Starmer strategy means plainly “affordable” social policies tuned to what Labour’s target voters want to hear rather than what the activists, or even MPs, want to see. It will no doubt be upsetting to many on the left, but it marks a striking contrast to the way the Conservative leadership candidates are having to placate their membership rather than appeal to the wider electorate.

To recall one of Blair’s soundbites, the image Starmer wants to project is that he is leading his party; Truss and Sunak look more like they're having to follow theirs.