This week, Keir Starmer finally abandoned his commitment to scrap university tuition fees, one of the last remaining concrete pledges he made to Labour members when he sought their votes three years ago. His dishonesty is not a moral issue, but rather a warning about the type of government he is likely to form next year.
When interrogated by Andrew Neil in March 2020 about whether university tuition fees would be scrapped as part of his general election manifesto, he answered, “They’re all pledges, Andrew, so the answer to these questions is yes.”
If there is any confusion about what a pledge is, it is defined as “a solemn promise or undertaking”. In a meeting with young voters in 2021, Starmer added that he “felt very strongly that one of the things that benefited me greatly was not having tuition fees”, adding that’s “why we rightly committed at the last election to get rid of tuition fees”. During the Labour leadership contest in 2020, I put it to Starmer that several MPs backing him would push for a U-turn. “They’ll have to accept the mandate I was elected on,” he bluntly told me.
This is not the first time he has rowed back on policy commitments. In the same set-piece interview with Neil, the presenter asked if he would “guarantee” the nationalisation of all utilities. “I’ve made that commitment,” he responded. Curious, then, that a year later, he told Laura Kuenssberg: “I didn’t make a commitment to nationalisation, I never made a commitment to nationalisation.”
Starmer also promised to hike taxes on the richest 5%, but now bemoans “the highest taxation burden since the war”, which certainly does not apply to the well-off. “Defend free movement as we leave the EU” he pledged back in 2020, before later nonsensically claiming this only applied in the period leading up to the moment of Brexit. This was, after all, the man who traded on his remain credentials, then last year attacked the Tories for allegedly considering a softer Brexit.
As well as using his pledges to appeal to the left, Starmer also courted liberal voters by flirting with proportional representation. He said that “on electoral reform, we’ve got to address the fact that millions of people vote in safe seats and they feel their vote doesn’t count”, leading the Electoral Reform Society to declare that his “backing of electoral reform puts democracy at the heart of Labour’s leadership contest”. And yet just last week, his spokesperson declared that Starmer has a “longstanding view against proportional representation” and that “he isn’t looking to change the electoral system”.
Starmer defends junking his commitments because of the upheaval caused by Covid, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Tory mismanagement. The problem with this view is that greater levels of crisis demand more radicalism, not less. After the second world war, the economic and physical wreckage of Britain did not prevent Labour from founding the NHS, creating the welfare state, building mass housing and nationalising a fifth of the economy.
But this was clearly never Starmer’s intention, despite his declarations, as from the start he surrounded himself with Blairite staff members – specifically, veterans of the ill-fated leadership campaign of New Labour torchbearer Liz Kendall in 2015 – with a longstanding, passionate opposition to such policy commitments. Politicians and advisers who have worked with him report he has “no politics” – making him an ideal, impressionable frontman for those surrounding him. During the leadership contest, veteran Blairite MP Margaret Hodge claimed Starmer’s camp promised her that he was “lying” to get the job and would renege on his policy commitments after he won – as indeed he did.
No leader of a major political party has so comprehensively junked their leadership platform in British democratic history. When Tony Blair ran for leader in 1994, he did not pose as a Bennite before abruptly shifting rightwards. Blair’s broad vision for both party and country was clear from the start. To Gordon Brown’s credit, he had a much clearer set of political values than Starmer, but was unable to translate that into a clear offer when he became prime minister. “You’d imagine that after 10 years of waiting, and 10 years complaining about Tony, we would have some idea of what we are going to do, but we don’t seem to have any policies,” one of his lieutenants complained at the time. The result? His government was buffeted by events, ending up in a perpetual tailspin.
This risks being the fate of a Starmer government. It would come to power in far more adverse circumstances than Brown suffered: the legacy of 14 years of slash-and-burn cuts, neglected services and infrastructure, a collapsing NHS and falling living standards. Without a clear sense of purpose, let alone answers to basic questions – where will the money come from to pay for rebuilding public services across the board? – crisis and disappointment may swiftly follow.
Having a clear vision isn’t some nerdy abstraction for wonks: it’s what keeps a government anchored, rather than drifting at the mercy of circumstance. And so Starmer’s deceit may have bought him the leadership of his party, but may well sink him in government.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist