Starmer’s Labour is proving to be strong and stable

Editorial: In its willingness to risk unpopularity – with the public at large, and on its own benches – this government is a marked contrast with recent chaotic and incompetent administrations. But as the House of Commons votes on reducing winter fuel payments, some evidence of a gentler politics would also not go amiss

What is unclear is whether the prime minister and his chancellor Rachel Reeves have really persuaded people of the merits of the case for the winter fuel payments cut (Getty/PA)

Having somewhat overdelivered on his election slogan of “Change”, Sir Keir Starmer may be shopping around for a new motto to guide his “missions”. On the evidence of his performance so far, it is a great pity, from his point of view, that “strong and stable” came to be so discredited by his predecessor but two, Theresa May.

As a guiding principle, it would suit him far better, given his rational, stolid, pragmatic but determined style of government – everything Ms May wished to be but was prevented from doing by circumstance, a flawed personality, and her party. Boris Johnson used to deride the Labour leader as a “useless bollard” but he is proving to be a highly useful bollard, protecting the nation against the trauma of recent weeks.

Early days, then, but Sir Keir strikes a marked contrast to the chaotic, incompetent and sometimes downright dishonest ways of the more recent Conservative incumbents. The electorate concluded, rightly, that a party that couldn’t run itself couldn’t run the country. Labour is different, at least for now.

As a lawyer by trade and a kind of civil servant manqué, as well as the only premier ever to have headed a large government agency before entering parliament, Sir Keir is running his administration well, notwithstanding some accusations of mild cronyism. Despite some parliamentary dissent (not unhealthy in a democracy), he is carrying his programme through with evidently forceful leadership, willing to endure unpopularity. He doesn’t have to make any U-turns, such is the size of his parliamentary majority; but nor does he seem inclined to wish to.

His more excitable critics – who paint him, absurdly, as a modern-day Stalin – are, unconsciously, paying him something of a compliment. He was indeed at his very best in reacting to the riots that broke out after the murder of the little girls in Southport, rightly refusing to appease the thugs and the racists but ensuring deterrent justice was done and seen to be done rapidly. It probably saved lives.

With scarcely a squeal from the opposition, a bill to nationalise the railways has been passed, VAT on private school fees is being implemented, and relations with the EU reset. He was attacked from all sides for his decision to cancel a portion of UK arms export licences to Israel but he stood firm.

The smaller stuff has seen him equally unfazed by routine turbulence; he has even been criticised for buying a pedigree kitten and moving a portrait of Margaret Thatcher, yet both of these minor changes to life in No 10 will be going ahead.

Where Sir Keir has to make more progress is in communication. He and his ministers are not quite winning some of the vital arguments to maintain the confidence of their party and the wider electorate. Banging on about the £22bn black hole is all very well, and valid enough, but logically it doesn’t justify everything done in the name of correcting it. Choices are being made, and not self-evidently obvious ones.

Clearly, the most controversial move of his administration so far has been to restrict the winter fuel payment. He will face a significant Commons rebellion on the issue, just as he had to deal with a smaller one on child benefit earlier on; but, so far from being bullied by the left, he has defied them and will no doubt do so again. He is not going to become a prison of his parliamentary factions in the way that Cameron, May, Johnson, Truss and Sunak all were. His parliamentary majority for the changes to winter fuel allowance will be visible from space.

Yet what is much less clear is whether he and his chancellor have really persuaded people of the merits of the case.

Rachel Reeves could have had better timing, as does now seem obvious. The announcement of the means testing of a pensioners’ benefit introduced by Gordon Brown was almost simultaneous to the above-inflation pay rises awarded to junior doctors and train drivers. That offered an all-too-easy narrative for the opposition to exploit, as Rishi Sunak showed at his most recent session of questions to the prime minister.

The government has not made enough of the way that the pension triple lock, albeit a Liberal Democrat policy adopted by the Conservatives, has succeeded in redressing much of the discrepancy between wages and the state pension that once made the special winter fuel payment essential. The intervention in today’s Independent by Lord Carlile, a most prominent Jewish member of the House of Lords, on Israel’s armament is exactly the sort of argument and wider opinion that the government should have been able to gather.

As it stands, by the end of this parliament, the position of pensioners relative to the rest of the population will have certainly improved still further, even allowing for the loss of help with fuel bills for all but the poorest of the older population. Real pensions have risen, and will continue to rise – but there is also a growing consensus that the triple lock formula needs to be revisited.

Even some of the Conservative leadership contenders – chasing the hefty “grey” vote among their own party membership – have refused to rule out reform. Ms Reeves could challenge the Tories in that, and also ask them to say whether they’d restore the winter fuel allowance – and, if so, how they would fund it. She could make much more of the cumulative rise in the real value of the state pension and associated concessions over, say, the last decade, and the greater financial security enjoyed by many of the over-70s – and contrast that with the predicament in which the younger generation find themselves.

These valid and compelling arguments seem to be going by default as Sir Keir and Ms Reeves rely on the whips and parliamentary brute force to get things done. Strong and stable this administration is indeed proving to be – but if it continues to neglect the gentler political arts, it will start to lose support even among those well disposed towards it.