Labour doesn’t need to go back to Blair – but it does still need to learn from him

What Keir Starmer has to resurrect is the same election-winning ethos and will to win that Blair and Brown created when they made Labour, in effect, the political arm of the British people, writes Peter Mandelson

Keir Starmer came across in a natural way during his interview with Piers Morgan (ITV)

When Keir Starmer appeared on Piers Morgan’s Life Stories, the first applause he drew from the audience was when he said: “I’ve been Labour leader for 14 months, and actually this is the first time I’ve had an audience.”

It was a nice public appreciation of what these abnormal times have wreaked on the leader of the opposition and a welcome sign that the public are prepared to keep an open mind about someone they may choose as their next prime minister.

Starmer’s Westminster share price has risen since the Life Stories appearance. It remains to be seen whether public sentiment follows in the polls. My hunch is that it will, partly because he came across in such a natural way with a genuinely interesting – sometimes harrowing – family back story, which will have registered with viewers and will be talked about by them.

The prime minister’s vaccine good fortune will not hold out for ever, and just as the pandemic itself had a deeply unequal impact on the population, so will its aftermath. When the public are once more reminded of Boris Johnson’s ill-suited temperament and habitual disarray (he remains the same chaotic shopping trolley described so memorably by Dominic Cummings), they will feel less forgiving towards their prime minister than they have been so far this year.

When this market adjustment happens, one of two reactions will kick in among Labour’s high command. Relief that at last the political pressure has lifted, enabling them to relax. Or recognition that their political recovery must now resume in earnest.

Starmer will, of course, say he is determined to make his party match fit but not all his colleagues will share his understanding of what, fundamentally, this means, above all its implications for Labour’s economic policies and credentials. At the moment, there is a tug of war going on between the erstwhile Corbynistas who want to stand by Labour’s “everything for free” 2019 manifesto and others on the left who champion the “retro 1970s” manifesto of 2017.

I am among those whose faith in Labour’s leader was restored by his Life Stories appearance. My fear from the previews that it might all come across as cloying and contrived was not borne out. I was reassured, though, for another reason: Starmer clearly realised what was at risk in such a high-stakes personal performance and he was determined not to fail. Not only did he reveal himself to be a fully paid up and very attractive member of the human race but the sheer skill and demeanour he displayed in pulling off the performance confirmed his sense of professionalism – something which recently looked in doubt. His handling of the shadow cabinet reshuffle hardly filled anyone with confidence.

Starmer is clearly no ordinary politician, which is a good and a bad thing. Good because he is not from central casting. He was successful in a hugely demanding job before he ever entered parliament and is patently the very opposite of a shopping trolley, veering from side to side in the aisle. But bad in that he is not yet a fully formed politician, which leaves him vulnerable to the vagaries and hard knocks of political life, and too trusting in his approach.

He has to fix all his concentration on the revolution required to make Labour electorally competitive again. There is a danger for Starmer that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Winning a general election is tough, especially for a party that, under both Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, took in enough water to sink a much sturdier ocean-going vessel than Labour has proved to be over the past half century.

I do not want to provoke (again) the non-Blairites in Labour’s ranks but it does bear repeating that the party’s score card in the last 11 general elections since 1979 goes lose-lose-lose-lose-Blair-Blair-Blair-lose-lose-lose-lose. And before hard and soft left alike jump on me from a vast height, let me be clear: I am not suggesting that Labour fights the next election with the same prescription and policies on which New Labour was elected in 1997. It would be a good idea, however, to show a willingness to learn not just from our defeats but from our all-too-infrequent victories.

What Starmer has to resurrect from that time is not the manifesto but the same election-winning ethos and will to win that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown created when they made Labour, in effect, the political arm of the British people. More important than winning the sort of ideological argument within the party that preoccupied both Miliband and Corbyn in their different ways was Blair and Brown’s absolute determination to build a winning progressive coalition in the country.

Yes, this involved pride in Britain, dignity in old age and a more equal economy, as Starmer set out in his Life Stories interview. But it also included the harder things for Labour’s left to swallow, like being tough on crime and a frank recognition that not everything can be achieved through higher taxation, and would include now retaining a sense of proportion on “politically correct” matters such as gender, history and identity.

In other words, what won for New Labour was not policies per se, but an approach that seeks to overcome the deep-seated misgivings that many have about voting Labour, and makes a virtue of seeking ideas, support and solutions across conventional political divisions and boundaries. Perhaps Tony Blair might have made this point if he had been invited by Starmer on to Life Stories alongside Brown and Neil Kinnock. There is always next time.