STEPHEN GLOVER: Starmer’s Mr Moderate act is collapsing

For many months Sir Keir Starmer has religiously followed the Tony Blair playbook. Say what you like about him, the Labour leader has made a pretty good job of it.

Just as in the years running up to the 1997 election Blair presented himself as a moderate who wouldn’t rattle the teacups, so Sir Keir has painstakingly constructed an image of himself as unthreatening and trustworthy.

The Corbynites have been purged or ignored. A £28 billion splurge on green investment has been savagely pruned. There’s little talk of tax rises, apart from putting VAT on private school fees. 

Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has indicated that a Labour government would stick to Tory spending plans, at least in the short term.

Only last month, Sir Keir sought to reassure readers of this newspaper with a trenchant article promising that the nuclear deterrent, and indeed the entire Armed Forces, would be safe in his hands.

Admittedly there’s an absence of detail in much of Sir Keir’s offering, leading the sceptical among us to wonder about the draconian policies he might have up his sleeve. Nonetheless, he has striven with considerable success to put centre ground voters at their ease, and even to tempt traditional Tories to defect.

That is, until Tuesday, when Sir Keir’s carefully contrived concoction of policies collapsed like an overcooked soufflé. The Labour leader ran up against the reality of Left-leaning trade unions, and the forthright views of his deputy, Angela Rayner.

Sir Keir has effectively caved into the brothers. They had been disturbed by media stories of the Labour leader and Rachel Reeves lunching with City and business panjandrums, and getting rather too pally over the fine claret and passion fruit pavlova.

In particular, trade unionists were alarmed by stories that these devious capitalists had managed to persuade the Labour duo to water down plans to boost workers’ rights.

Last September, Angela Rayner (who is a former union official) set the Trade Union Congress in Liverpool alight with talk of Labour’s ‘New Deal for Working People’.

She pledged to scrap recent anti-strike laws and introduce new workers’ rights within 100 days of taking office, as well as making it easier for union representatives to recruit members. The living wage would rise, zero-hours contracts would be banned, and employees would enjoy a range of rights from their first day in a job.

Fears among trade unionists that these reforms would be diluted have been allayed. It’s true that the commitment to sign them into law in 100 days has become a looser undertaking to publish draft legislation within that period, followed by a detailed consultation.

But most of Ms Rayner’s New Deal survives intact. Zero-hours contracts will be banned. Staff will have more protection against dismissal from day one. Sick pay will increase. Recent trade union laws introduced by the Tories will be repealed.

In short, the supposedly business-friendly Labour leader hasn’t been softened up by those grand lunches after all. He has capitulated, and given the trade unions what they want. Business, and so the economy, will inevitably pay.

Why has Sir Keir rolled over? Partly because he doesn’t want to take on his loquacious deputy, even though she has surely been politically weakened by the unedifying controversy over the sale of her council house.

A deeper reason is that he doesn’t want to risk offending the trade unions, who remain Labour’s reliable paymasters. At the 2019 general election, the party registered donations of £5.4 million, of which just over £5 million came from unions. It is true that, as Labour has appeared increasingly sympathetic to business, so it has raised much more from rich individuals and companies. Last year it received £13 million from such sources, including a donation of £4.5 million from a mega-rich South African businessman, Gary Lubner.

Nonetheless, the trade unions can be counted on to reach into their pockets. They mustn’t be slighted.

More than this, we must consider the possibility — no, the probability — that Sir Keir Starmer, for all his calculated efforts to come across as Mr Moderate, wants the trade unions to have more sway.

Under a Labour government, we would probably return to that benighted era of ‘beer and sandwiches’ when obstreperous trade unions cut deals with Labour governments in No 10 in what were in those days smoke-filled rooms.

Is this what the British people want? The trade unions may offer vital financial support to the Labour Party, and they may agree with Sir Keir Starmer on all manner of things, but they are no longer remotely representative of all workers.

In 2022, some 6.25 million people were members of trade unions, which amounts to about 22.3 per cent of the work force. Why should organisations that represent only just over a fifth of workers be allowed to dictate labour practices for the whole country?

For example, the unions have argued vehemently, and successfully, against zero-hours contracts. But these arrangements suit many thousands of workers in the so-called ‘gig economy’. The unions’ thinking is stuck in the 1970s.

Offering staff more protection against dismissal from their first day at work, and boosting sick pay, is bound to increase business costs. If they pay more, so will consumers.

Worst of all is the prospect of unrepresentative trade unions being given a central place by a Labour government in wage-bargaining. Those who can remember the chaos and strife of the 1970s will shudder.

The success of the economy since the advent of Margaret Thatcher — even if it may have recently stuttered — has been largely attributable to her taming the rapacious unions. That settlement is now threatened.

Some in business may say that Sir Keir is simply sweet-talking the trade unions, and has no intention either of enacting Angela Rayner’s New Deal or of according the unions a central role. He will do what Tony Blair did for the most part, which was to honour the Thatcherite settlement.

But anyone who chooses to believe this is taking a huge risk. When politicians declare that they intend to do something, it’s wise to suppose that they mean what they say. The message of Tuesday’s meeting is that, if Sir Keir Starmer becomes Prime Minister, business will be loaded with extra costs, and the trade unions will become more powerful.

We know that Sir Keir has travelled in a remarkably short space of time from being a close ally and self-proclaimed ‘friend’ of the Hard Left Jeremy Corbyn to being a seemingly moderate, Blairite sort of politician.

You can choose to marvel that it is possible for someone to change so profoundly and so quickly, and give thanks. Or you can wonder whether the transformation is entirely genuine, and question the carefully contrived image the Labour leader has created.

Despite Sir Keir’s best efforts, the truth will sometimes break through. Tuesday’s deal with the unions was just such an occasion. No one can pretend that we haven’t been warned.