Labour's Rightward Shift Epitomizes Everything Wrong With Politics

In his bid to win power, Keir Starmer hasn't just gone to war with the Conservative Party. He has gone to war with truth, accountability and integrity.

Last Friday, Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party and, according to recent opinion polls, the man who could become Britain’s future PM, when pressed about his party’s position towards the ongoing Israeli-Gaza war by an ITV journalist, said that a future Labour government would recognise a Palestinian state. Three days earlier, however, Starmer had said something completely different: that a future Labour government would only recognise an independent Palestinian state if the Israeli government consented.

This paradox is not abnormal to the Labour leader, whose stewardship of the party has been characterised by constant U-turns and a contortion of the truth. Take, for instance, the ten pledges he used to launch his leadership bid. They weren’t just a contract between him and party members but an articulation of his vision and ethos, illustrating where he would stand on a myriad of issues. Since then, almost all of those pledges have either been abandoned entirely or diluted down to the point where they are virtually unrecognisable.

Abolishing the House of Lords? Scrapped.

Taxing the wealthiest in British society? Scrapped.

Championing human rights on the international stage? Scraped.

For someone that enjoys contrasting himself as a man of upstanding fibre with the charlatans running the modern Tory Party, Starmer seems to have a similar fleeting relationship with honesty and transparency. In late 2023, Starmer, seeking to boost his environmental credentials, pledged to align England’s Right of Way laws with Scotland’s, which takes a far more permissible view of how much land citizens are allowed to encroach on. Nearly half a year later, however, the pledge had been - characteristically - dropped. The most astute observers were quick to point out that the Labour Party had recently taken donations from Lord Sainsbury, a landowner.

Last week heralded even more bleak news. On Friday, Rachel Reeves, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, confirmed that a £28bn annual investment fund, intended to be spent on new green technology and infrastructure in a bid to combat climate change, had been scrapped to satisfy the party’s new strict fiscal rules. The announcement, though not unexpected, marked the death of ambition in the party.

More clandestine has been the party’s overtures to large donors. In the absence of a large, active membership, with most deserting the party in an exodus following Starmer’s right-ward shift, and dwindling financial support from the trade unions, Labour has attempted to fill the financial deficit by catering to the same financial backers that have supported the Conservative Party. In the second quarter of 2023 alone, for instance, Labour recorded funds in excess of £10M, with Robin MacGeachy, owner of Peak Scientific, a world leader in gas generators, donating £400,000, and Gareth Quarry, a businessman who donated £100,000 to the Tories, donating £100,000.

At the party’s last conference in Liverpool last Autumn, business representatives accounted for almost a third of conference attendees. Trade union delegates, on the other hand, formed just 3 percent. With the party’s principles compromised, business interests were free to jostle for MPs’ attention. For Ovo Energy and SSE, the goal was no doubt to herald the private energy market’s role in mitigating climate change. Private healthcare provider Bupa also charmed Wes Streeting, after the shadow health secretary hinted at further privatization of the National Heath Service (NHS). And financial groups like TheCityUK, Santander, and TSB tried to sway the future government over taxation.

Sanguine Labour supporters have dismissed claims of opportunism, arguing that the U-turns represent Mr. Starmer’s pragmatic streak. His ability to be malleable is an enticing one, they argue, in an ever-changing world where stability cannot be guaranteed as easily as it used to be. But surely this defeats the point being made. If Keir Starmer cannot adhere to his own convictions and is easily swayed by the influence of big money, why would anyone expect him to offer a genuine alternative from the Conservatives, who indulge in the same manner of avarice?

I should preface this by saying that I am by no means an idealist. These grievances do not originate from an optimistic view that a utopia can be built in this country in just a few years, especially after the destruction left in the wake of nearly a decade and a half of conservative rule. Politics is, understandably, a game of negotiations and sometimes compromises must be made, either to win vacillating supporters from the other parties or because the current economic situation simply doesn’t allow for some of the more ambitious pledges to take fruition. But at a time when most voters are growing apathetic towards political corruption and politicians being overtaken by vested interests, now is the perfect opportunity for Starmer and his allies to demonstrate that a different politics is possible, that policies that suit the public interest can withstand the assault of big businesses and wealthy donors.

So far, he has failed to defend that vision. By ruthlessly purging the party of any dissent, Starmer has surrounded himself with a circle of docile lap-dogs, who, motivated by the allures of career advancement and political prestige, unquestionably regurgitate the party line as if it is gospel. Labour, once famous as a broad church where disagreement was not only tolerated but encouraged, has degenerated into a close, narrow-minded organisation.

It begets the question: ‘what will guide a future Labour government in office? Clearly not the role of its members, who have been unceremoniously discarded to the side. Nor the trade unions, who risk being silenced by the growing list of businesses and trust fund donors. Instead, Starmer and his closest allies seem to swear allegiance to the same architects behind the last 14 years of decline and impoverishment - namely, corporate lobbyists.

Devoid of an actual vision or plan, Labour risks oscillating from one position to the next. While Starmer has declared himself ready to fix a “broken Britain,” these aspirations have ultimately been dampened as the public’s ambitions for transformative change by constantly narrowing the party’s horizons. Without ever explaining what they are or who sets them, Labour politicians point to “fiscal rules” shackling them to the spending commitments already made by Rishi Sunak’s Tory government. Reading between the lines, the argument Starmer and the top brass of Labour seem to be advancing is that the last decade and a half of decline is more of a result of Conservative incompetence than the economic orthodoxy itself. Their promise to the electorate is to steady the ship, not to shift course, even while the country seems to be entering a new turbulent storm.