What’s keeping Keir Starmer up at night? It’s safe to assume the list is long and that we’re unlikely ever to see it in full, given the myriad security and intelligence matters that take up so much of a PM’s time without ever breaking into public view. So, aside from state secrets, what else might his mind latch on to in the small hours?
His friends often repeat the rather implausible claim that he “isn’t that political” – that is, he doesn’t work the Westminster tearooms and isn’t interested in cliques and plots. This might be true in one sense (he doesn’t strike me as the most clubbable of men) but nobody becomes leader of their party and Prime Minister of their country without a well-tuned political antenna.
With that in mind, it’s not hard to imagine that one man more than any other intrudes on Starmer’s thoughts: Nigel Farage.
Recent reports suggest that Starmer is very much alive to the threat posed by Reform, so much so that he apparently used a recent cabinet meeting to criticise “progressive liberals” who don’t listen to people’s concerns on immigration. Progressive liberals who thought they were voting for a progressive liberal may be stung by the jibe, but they shouldn’t be surprised.
Reform has developed a habit of topping opinion polls lately, and though an election is still surely four years off, the party’s move from insurgent to mainstream is alarming Labour and Tory strategists alike. While the Conservatives certainly have their own existential crisis to deal with, the Labour party faces an equally daunting task.
Many of their MPs and much of their membership would wear the ‘progressive liberal’ badge with pride, but they’re coming up against a resurgent faction of the left known as Blue Labour, a movement aligned to the more socially conservative inclinations of traditional working class voters.
The group’s flag bearer, Maurice Glasman, has identified the enemy in the form of Attorney General and long-standing friend of the PM, Lord Hermer. The government’s top lawyer is in many ways the personification of progressive liberalism, valuing the supposed supremacy of international law above the vulgar trivialities of politics and opinion polls. Glasman calls him a fool and says he “has got to go”.
Labour has launched a campaign to show how tough it is on illegal migration, and they’ve seemingly dropped a bid to make it easier to change gender, but do these tactics add up to a strategy? Even if they do, will the public buy it? Starmer may well decide to dispense with Lord Hermer in a Spring reshuffle, but it’s unlikely he’d be the last Labour figure felled by Farage.