What does Keir Starmer really believe? That’s the wrong question

We know the Labour leader has been on a political journey, although he is unforthcoming about it, writes John Rentoul

I don’t think that what happens to our relationship with the EU after the next election will be much affected by what Starmer’s ‘natural instincts’ might be (PA)

I think Daniel Finkelstein is asking the wrong question. It is an interesting question, but it is not the right one. He asked in The Times yesterday what Keir Starmer really believes. And Finkelstein concluded that, although it is possible that he had been “an essentially middle-of-the-road type” all along, it was also possible that he has “always been quite left-wing” and “might well still be on the left”.

Some people might welcome this second interpretation, although Finkelstein, a Conservative peer, poses it as a threat: “If he were to capture power he would then be able to move the country leftward, with voter assent. He would return to something closer to his natural instinct. And it would not be the left who would feel betrayed.”

However, although this may be an interesting question, I don’t think answering it will tell us much about what a Labour government would be like. Very few prime ministers believe in anything that makes much difference to how the country is run. Margaret Thatcher had some views about trade unions and privatisation; Tony Blair worked out a theory in government about better public services; Boris Johnson half-wanted to leave the EU.

Even in those cases, they were acting under forces pressing from outside. If James Callaghan had fought and won an election in 1978, he would have curbed trade union power and respected market realities. By New Labour’s time, the voters wanted a bit more public spending even if national insurance contributions had to go up to pay for it. And it was the British people who decided to leave the EU and then confirmed in 2019 that “Brexit means Brexit”. Johnson just sorted out the paperwork – and didn’t make a good job of it, it would seem.

We can guess, too, that by the time of the election, the pressure of public opinion will be for some kind of Brexit correction. Whichever party is in power, Johnson’s Brexit deal is likely to be adjusted in favour of a closer trading relationship. That would probably go further and faster under a Labour government, because of the cumulative effect of thousands of small decisions made by Labour ministers, who overwhelmingly supported EU membership, backed by Labour MPs in the Commons (and Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists if necessary), who also overwhelmingly supported EU membership.

But I don’t think that what happens to our relationship with the EU after the next election will be much affected by what Starmer’s “natural instincts” might be. His true position is obviously that a close EU relationship is a good thing, but his political imperative is to say that there is “no case” for rejoining the EU – a transparently absurd statement that reveals how desperately he wishes it were true.

This is where Finkelstein’s theory breaks down. He imagines that there is a “true” Starmer view that will dictate what will happen under a Labour government. That Starmer has either converted to the idea that rejoining the EU is a bad idea, and will continue to rule it out in government, or that he is a secret federalist who will turn to show his true face after the election and say: “I don’t care who knows it now: I love the EU and we’re going back in tomorrow!”

That is not going to happen. As prime minister, Starmer would tiptoe towards closer economic ties with the EU, while holding back the wilder pro-EU elements of his party, all the while keeping his eyes fixed on the middle-ground Eurosceptic voters who put him into No 10 in the first place.

If it won’t happen on the question of Europe, I don’t think it will happen on Corbynomics either. Finkelstein’s real worry, I think, is that Starmer will turn out after the election to be a sky-pie-minded, magic-money believer, who will tax, borrow, spend and nationalise until he hits the market buffers in much the same way as Liz Truss did from the right.

We know that Starmer used to espouse some far-out political views, and we can surmise that his opinions have changed, although as Finkelstein says, he has never been forthcoming about the personal journey he has made. In his twenties, Starmer was a member of the International Revolutionary Marxist Tendency, a small outfit that was more into workers’ co-ops than the violent overthrow of capitalism. As a sectarian Blairite, I can never forgive him for supporting Tony Benn’s leadership challenge against Neil Kinnock in 1988. And I would love to know more about how he got from advocating the abolition of the monarchy to his glowing tribute to the Queen when she died and singing “God Save the King” at Labour conference last year.

But I don’t think the answers hold many clues to what a Labour government will be like. It will not pursue a left-wing version of Trussonomics, whatever Starmer may have said about Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 manifesto being a “foundational document”. A Starmer government’s economic policy will be a slightly more social-democratic version of Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt’s One Nation Toryism.

There is a question about how ruthlessly Starmer will pay attention to the preferences of the median voter, hauling his party back as Blair always had to do from trying to do supposedly left-wing things that would put voters off. But that is not a question of what Starmer “really” believes. It is a question of how serious he is about gaining and retaining power.