Keir Starmer finds some passion

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Rarely has a UK prime minister fallen so quickly from grace. In 15 months, Sir Keir Starmer has gone from leading his Labour party to an electoral landslide — albeit on an unusually narrow slice of the vote — to calamitous approval ratings, questions over his leadership, and a 10-point deficit in the polls to Nigel Farage’s nationalist Reform UK party.

His task in this week’s Labour annual conference was to attempt to unite grassroots supporters and his MPs behind him, amid manoeuvrings by his potential challenger, the Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham. After a speech delivered with the sense of passion and purpose that has frequently eluded him, Starmer may have swayed some doubters. It will take much more to seize the momentum and begin to turn around Labour’s fortunes.

It is, ironically, the surge of Farage’s Reform that appears to have energised Starmer. He chose to define himself and his party against the arch Brexiter and his latest political vehicle, portraying Reform — in an attempt to rally Labour leftwingers — as a greater threat to the country than the Conservatives. He framed Labour as the party of decency and renewal against Reform as the party of division and decline. He attempted to seize the mantle of flag-waving patriotism, but as pride in Britain as “a decent, pragmatic, tolerant and reasonable country”.

A vein of “blue Labour” ran through his remarks, combining often overtly leftwing economic policies with socially conservative values, and warnings against patronising working class concerns, including over immigration. Yet Starmer’s attacks on Reform contained covert jabs at the Labour left, in his condemnations of easy promises and irresponsible finances.

The business community will welcome Starmer’s reiteration of economic growth as his overriding priority, and the commitment to “strip out bad regulation”. Yet the prime minister has still to demonstrate that he can balance his promise to mend fences with business with Labour left demands for high-spending policies that could endanger fiscal discipline.

Many businesses will be wary of Starmer’s evocations of an industrial policy with echoes as much of 1970s-style dirigisme as of the confident, outward-looking, knowledge-based economy Britain should aspire to be. There were some unfortunate retreats from the Blairite vision of the New Labour era, notably with the scrapping of the target for 50 per cent of young people to attend university — even if this was replaced with a goal of two-thirds going to university or a “gold-standard” apprenticeship — and Starmer’s criticism of “globalisation”.

Ultimately, moreover, this was a well-rehearsed political theatre. Starmer showed more ability to craft a narrative than before. But voters have yet to be convinced that he can turn the words into real action that makes them feel the government is working for them.

The biggest near-term challenge remains the November Budget, when chancellor Rachel Reeves must fill a hole in the public finances that could be a much as £30bn, without heaping taxes on business and wealth creators that would subdue growth. The chancellor’s own conference speech gave few clues as to how she aims to pull this off.

Starmer’s speech may have quietened some internal critics. But the best means of quelling dissent is for a government to look like winners who have a firm grasp on what they are doing. With no obvious alternative leader who would be better placed to reverse Labour’s fortunes, questions over Starmer’s leadership from his own MPs are a debilitating distraction. Unless his administration can get a grip, however, they are unlikely to abate.