Starmer is finally showing his ruthless side by stealing Tory policies

In recent weeks, Labour has unveiled policies on crime, immigration, buying land to build houses on and Brexit. Each one has sought to steal the Conservatives’ clothes, writes John Rentoul

Starmer is trying to shut down Tory attacks on him over what, traditionally, have been Tory issues – and looks to be succeeding (PA Wire)

Labour has come to life. After the middle period of Keir Starmer’s leadership of the opposition, when journalists complained about an absence of detail, and people in focus groups said he just criticises all the time, his party suddenly boasts policies.

In recent weeks, Labour has unveiled policies on crime, immigration, buying land to build houses on and Brexit. Each one has sought to steal the Conservatives’ clothes. Rishi Sunak had to rush out a counter-policy on crime – something about fly-tipping and making yobs clean up their own graffiti – but has struggled to keep up with the speed and boldness of other invasions of Tory territory.

On immigration, Labour proposed changing the rules for work visas so that foreign workers couldn’t undercut British ones in shortage occupations. On land, Labour came up with a policy that would enable local councils to buy land and to capture the gain in value from the granting of planning permission. This cut against Labour’s previous policy of giving local people the power to block development, but it successfully embarrassed a government that has dropped house-building targets.

Then yesterday, Starmer declared: “Britain’s future is outside the EU.” He ruled out more emphatically than before the idea that a Labour government would try to rejoin the EU single market or customs union, let alone the EU itself.

In each of these cases, Starmer was trying to shut down Tory attacks on him over what, traditionally, have been Tory issues. He seems to be succeeding in getting across Labour’s new, more conservative positions. A YouGov poll yesterday, for example, found that, although nearly half of people surveyed didn’t know what Starmer’s stance on Europe was, most of those who said they did thought it was: “That it was wrong to leave, but if elected prime minister he will not try to rejoin the EU.”

Starmer’s ruthless attempt to close the gap between Labour and Tory policies is also evident in his responses to questions put to him by journalists. A few weeks ago, he said, in answer to an enquiry to his office, that he had always been opposed to proportional representation, which came as news to a lot of people who voted for him to be Labour leader. Suddenly, it also turned out that the policy of “votes at 16” was “under review”.

Yesterday, an attempt by Hugo Gye of the i newspaper to add up Labour’s unfunded spending promises succeeded in flushing out a number of denials. Labour officials said that Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary, may have said that she wants to guarantee childcare for under-12s, but that is not yet “agreed or costed”. While Labour’s pledge to restore aid spending to 0.7 per cent of national income is only “when the fiscal situation allows”, which is the same as the government’s policy.

More mysterious is the fate of Labour’s £28bn-a-year Green Prosperity Plan, on which Patrick Maguire of The Times is also pressing for clarity, calling it Labour’s “£28bn question”.

The backing away from that commitment to extra borrowing is still being contested in the shadow cabinet, it appears. So far Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has half-retreated, by saying that the borrowing is subject to her rule that debt must be falling by the end of a five-year period. If we leave that to one side along with the other big green pledge, to issue no new licences for oil and gas in the North Sea, which The Sunday Times forced the party to repeat last weekend, Starmer’s new Tory clothes have cut quite a dash.

What is significant is that they have caught the Tories off balance. For too long, the government has relied on Labour adopting positions which were very different from its own, and which were easy to caricature as irresponsible. Those distinctive policies worked surprisingly well for Jeremy Corbyn in the unusual circumstances of the 2017 election, but they helped Boris Johnson to win big in 2019.

Now that Starmer has taken them away, the Conservatives find themselves leaning on thin air. As a result, they have descended into an internal squabble about “Red Rishi” putting up taxes, spending billions on welfare and even talking about price controls. A large part of the Tory party wants to reopen the gap between the parties by moving off the centre ground to a low-tax, small-state “true” Conservatism.

Maybe they were going to lose their sense of direction anyway, after 13 years in office pursuing radically different policies under very different prime ministers, but Starmer’s attempt to cloak himself in Tory policies has helped stoke the Tory party’s turmoil of ideological confusion.

Clearly, Starmer is better at politics than his detractors thought.