Keir Starmer doesn’t deserve a lot of the criticism he faces – here’s why

It is much easier to say how someone should be leading than to actually do it, especially in a time of almost no political intrigue

A journalist called me up last week to ask me about the much reported grumblings of disquiet in the Labour Party. I laughed raucously at the suggestion that there were groupings of people organising to overthrow Keir Starmer. There aren’t. Don’t get me wrong, the Labour Party is still very much recovering from a period of fracture and hurt, and there are some among the number who will say that up is down or down is up, as long as someone perceived as being from a different wing of the party is saying the opposite. Same in the Tory party, same in the Lib Dems, as long as there are political parties there will be internal battles – it’s as certain as death and taxes.

Do you know who never asks me about wings or factions in any political party? The public. They don’t care. It might surprise you to hear that the grumblings of disquiet in the Tory party hardcore, or the Labour Party’s groupings, have never once been raised with me on a doorstep. If I were to ask most people in my constituency, “what is the ERG?”, they would probably guess it was an energy company.

The amount of attention I currently see being given to a few anonymous grumbles about the Labour Party makes me think that it is partly happening out of boredom. I for one am missing the cut and thrust of the politics that fired me up each week. I get it, we all need a bit of drama in between Zoom meetings. Politics in the thick of it is pretty thin in a time of no meetings, no chats grabbed in the corridor, not really any debates being held. I know myself from having to schedule in calls with colleagues who I would normally just bump into and grab a moment to have a chat with in friendly support, or even collegiate criticism, that this becomes a bigger, more portentous issue than it is when you have to contact their office and book a call or a video conversation. I cannot for a second imagine the hand dealt to a new leader of the opposition when, as best I know, he has never even been in the same room as his full shadow cabinet.

It is much easier to say how someone should be leading than to actually do it, especially in a time of almost no political intrigue and a country desperate for literally anyone to get anything even partially right for more than a month at a time. I keep seeing the criticism, both anonymous and otherwise, that the Labour Party is failing to oppose the government because it supports some of what the government is doing. This is merely a lazy analysis, but I guess it is an understandable hangover from the last decade of politics that told us there is only a binary, on or off; people are either heroes or they belong in the bin. It is very tedious.

Yes, Keir Starmer and the Labour Party have supported the government in some of the things that they have done, we do this because we are grown-ups. By the by, I just bumped in to my mother-in-law who had a sticker on her lapel that said: “I’ve had my Covid vaccination.” I thought I might cry in relief at that tiny little sticker. Only an idiot who cared more about their own political platform would have not supported the government on certain areas like the vaccine rollout in the crisis. Will we ever receive credit for helping stuff pass? No, probably not, but that’s OK.

So thankless support aside, you would have to be purposefully ignorant to think that the Labour Party has not opposed the government of late. Why, if there was no opposition, has the government U-turned and U-turned again throughout the crisis? I do not know a single person in the land, in Tory shires or in Labour heartlands, who would buy a fireplace off Gavin Williamson, let alone ask him to be in charge of educating their child. I also do not know anyone who doesn’t know that the Conservatives have handed out billions in contracts to their friends and family. Or anyone who thinks that the test, track and trace system is anything but the most abysmal Tory failure.

Notice how finally the government has put in place airport quarantine – you might remember that the Labour Party has been demanding this for months. When testing was crap, Labour took example after example to ministers and to the public – lo and behold, testing got better. Labour has repeatedly been on the front foot on education, while the Tories are showing parents across the country that they essentially forgot to make a plan for their kids after a year of twiddling their thumbs.

Here is the rub, though: politics is not business as usual at the moment. It is hard to get a hearing on many issues which would normally fly. People want the government to succeed. Hell, I really want them to, because I need my kids to have a future and my family to live. The time will come when Keir Starmer will not have to stand alone among the green benches. Soon he will be able to visibly build a team and create a fighting force with more than one other person allowed in a room. There is a reason you always get that triumphant group shot towards the end of movies of everyone walking together – seeing people as a group makes us, the viewer, see possibilities. It’s harder with a two-metre distance and a mask.

As far as I am concerned, Keir has done what he needed to do in the beginning and that was to be a different leader, different for Labour and different to the country. Job done, 10 months in.

I am not one to be silent when I think stuff is wrong, never have been, never will be. Constructive criticism needs to be brought back to the politics of division and bad faith without question. Is there stuff that needs to progress to make the Labour Party meet the country? Of course there is. But that’s on all of us to sort out. Expecting one person to do it alone is for the other side. By the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone in our homes on a webcam. I can’t wait to be properly back and fighting.

Jess Phillips is Labour MP for Birmingham Yardley