A selfie with Starmer
If Labour is going to form the next government, journalists' fan behaviour is a bad sign of what's to come.
Previously: Can you Keir the people sing?
The press plaudits for Labour's national anthem stunt won't last long.
From The Daily Mirror’s Susie Boniface — who also goes by the nom-de-column Fleet Street Fox — to GB News’ Rolf from the Sound of Music cosplayer Tom Harwood, hacks were eager to get a selfie with Keir Starmer at the Labour Party conference. “Bumped into a mate”, Boniface tweeted, while Harwood revelled in getting his snap despite the misgivings of party spin doctor Matthew Doyle (“Incredible photobomb by the Leader of the Opposition’s comms chief. ‘Keir I don’t think this is a good idea’.”)
Boniface, Harwood and Starmer were among the guests at the Mirror’s conference party, which was sponsored by the Betting & Gaming Council. A day earlier, the paper published a story headlined Peter Shilton looks "10 years younger" after beating £18,000-a-month addiction. Its recent non-celebrity stories on gambling addiction include Man's phone bombarded by gambling companies weeks after he took his own life (9 July 22) and 'I was hooked on fruit machines at 14 - I hid my £50k+ gambling debt from my wife' (25 July 22).
Politico’s ‘London Playbook’ newsletter listed the politicians, advisors, and hacks in attendance at the “legendary bash” and mentioned the sponsor matter-of-factly. That’s because the cosiness between journalists, politicians, and lobbyists does seem matter-of-fact to the occupants of that bubble. That former Labour MP, Michael Dugher, is the Betting & Gaming Council’s CEO and Huffington Post’s Political Editor Kevin Schofield — another guest at the “bash” — returned to journalism after a stint as its director of communications is just how the revolving door goes.
That climate of commercial, political, and media interests sloshing around together goes some way to explaining why the reporting on an uptick in business interest in the Labour conference was so unthinkingly positive. In the latest edition of The New Stateman’s ‘Morning Call’ newsletter, Rachel Wearmouth writes:
Activists will leave Liverpool… reinvigorated and hopeful that the Red Wall seats will switch back to Labour. The crowd at the conference was very different from that of other years, too, with fewer placards and more suits as businesses and donors show an interest in the party.
Labour lost 91,000 members in 2021, which may account somewhat for the change in composition at its conference. But the argument seems to be that those who left were the ‘wrong’ sort of people and the corporate lobbyists are very much the right kind.
At the start of the conference, Labour sources briefed Channel 4 News Policy Correspondent Paul McNamara that:
… they are making more money from corporate sponsors and exhibitors at this year’s conference than at any time since 2007. Party says they’re a government in waiting… it would appear big business thinks they might be too.
The same line was passed on by The Guardian’s Whitehall Editor, Rowena Mason:
Labour has attracted a surge of interest from big business at its conference in Liverpool with the biggest attendance of companies since 2010, including a firm owned by a major Tory donor.
… Labour sources said there had been a significant increase in business interest in its conference as the party continued to perform well in the polls, with bookmakers putting Starmer odds-on to win the next election.
The story goes on to quote a senior Labour source — important that they are “senior” even if their job is washing out the Shadow Cabinet’s tea mugs — who says:
[Businesses] are genuinely encouraged to see a sensible, functioning opposition party. The vast majority aren’t party political – there is just a sense of relief that there are some grownups in the room. They have been welcoming engagement from Labour that they didn’t have previously for quite a long time. The more the polls show we are ahead, the more they are reaching out to us.
Or corporate interests, being fully aware of the Tory Party’s latest Kamikwaze strategy, are making sure that Labour is appraised of their demands. It’s less “reaching out” and more beckoning Starmer towards their gingerbread houses.
In 1996, Tony Blair told the party conference that Labour was “not the political arm of anyone other than the British people.” Starmer — or more likely his speechwriter Alan Lockey1 — reheated the line for his speech (“Labour is the political wing of the British people…”). But outside the realm of stage rhetoric, Labour’s argument is: Don’t worry about all that messy party democracy, the “grown-ups” are back in charge.
The New Labour government quickly turned out to also be the political arm of Bernie Ecclestone, Richard ‘dirty Dicky’ Desmond, the Hinduja brothers, and, of course, Rupert Murdoch. Peter Mandelson, who was so “intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich as long as they pay their taxes” back then — and whose second cabinet resignation over the Hindujas’ passport application — is firmly back in the fold as an advisor to Starmer.
When Wearmouth talks about “fewer placards”, she also means fewer inconvenient discussions, fewer debates and a return to the Blairite “message discipline”, with all the attendant slogans, saluting and deals done far from the main hall. Later in the same newsletter, she writes:
Wes Streeting's rendition of Robbie Williams' “Angels” at a party, changing the lyrics to, "I'm loving Starmer instead," underlined that relationships within Labour are harmonious.
That’s the same Wes Streeting who has received substantial personal donations and is repeatedly called a “leader-in-waiting” in profiles, most recently by The Times this week (Wes Streeting: the bank robber’s grandson tipped to be Labour leader). There’s a counter-harmony if you listen carefully enough.
In the tune that The Times’ leader column is singing, you can also hear what it will take for Rupert Murdoch’s papers to swing behind Starmer. Even as the Conservative Party is engaged in an economic clown car crash, it turns to old stories:
Sir Keir enthused his audience by citing the Labour victories in 1945, 1964 and 1997. He ought to recall too the experience of Labour in government from 1974 to 1979. The party took office amid an economic crisis caused by an oil-price shock and a “dash for growth” by a Conservative chancellor. It immediately made the situation worse by irresponsible expansionist policies, which it was eventually forced to resile from by a currency crisis and the intervention of the International Monetary Fund. Socialism in office does not work. Sir Keir should acknowledge, as his predecessor James Callaghan did, that there are limits to state intervention and public spending.
“Socialism in office does not work,” it sneers as we watch the government showing us a range of things that clearly do not work. It goes on:
Becoming a party of government requires not only purging the far left, but being willing to think radically about reforming the NHS, targeting welfare spending more effectively and removing distortionary effects in the tax system.
When The Times says “the far left”, it means the left. And recent columns by Clare Foges (For many of us, the NHS is no longer sacred) and Jeremy Clarkson (Time to hack down our magic money tree. The NHS can go too) give a fair indication of what “radically reforming the NHS” means, while “targeting welfare spending more effectively” screams Austerity 2: Electric Boogaloo.
Meanwhile, The Sun’s leader offers a preview of how it will come after him come election time if he doesn’t offer something “tangible to benefit Sun readers” (or rather, one particular ageing antipodean reader):
For three years Starmer’s campaign to overturn Brexit paralysed Parliament. Then Covid closed the economy, while he demanded longer lockdowns. Putin’s war sent surging inflation into orbit.
Starmer claims the Government only cares about the wealthy. He deliberately ignores the looming cut to basic-rate tax, reversal of the National Insurance rise and massive energy bills bailout.
When he says he will make Britain better, fairer, cleaner and more dynamic, how? His green revolution is a fantasy. When he vows to axe business rates and recruit a new army of NHS staff, where’s the cash?
A story about him ‘failing’ to name an England striker during a radio interview also illustrates how easy it might be to re-run the “Ed Miliband is too weird” strategy.
The sheer disaster of the current government — now being accused, accurately, of “inept madness” by its own backbenchers — means Starmer is able to look good in comparison by simply acting like the Prime Minister character in an ITV mid-week drama. The low expectations are evident in the final paragraph of The Guardian’s leader on Starmer’s conference speech:
Sir Keir is starting to stand for something. Some would like him to be bolder. But his speech was good news for the country in one important way: Sir Keir has a better grip on the present than those he seeks to replace.
Starmer is starting to stand for something. That should be terrifying rather than a comfort. And a media that’s either preparing the demands in return for its support or holding its breath and penning fan fiction will fail us again.
The Labour leader is not “the amazing Sir Keir Starmer” as Boniface called him during a newspaper review last night, nor someone journalists should be grabbing selfies with or serenading at karaoke. He’s a man in the middle of a job interview and the fact that the current postholder is a danger should mean it gets more scrutiny, not less.
Who effectively made a public job application via Medium last year.