23 July 2023 , 20:57
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Keir Starmer and his team are scoring an own goal, appearing to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Instead of celebrating both a historic victory in Selby and the Lib Dems taking Somerton from the Tories, Labour has played into the Conservatives’ hands by obsessing about their defeat in Uxbridge.
To declare, as Starmer did, that “we’re doing something very wrong if policies put forward by the Labour Party end up on each and every Tory leaflet”, is to surrender.
Everything meaningful that Labour has ever achieved was won in the face of Conservative hostility and, no doubt, critical leaflets.
British politicians Clement Attlee (left) and Aneurin Bevan (Getty Images)Landmark changes, from the creation of the NHS and modern welfare state to the minimum wage, fairness at work, council housing and equal rights for women and same-sex couples, were delivered despite the opposition of the Tories.
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Follow his own guidance and Starmer would let the Conservatives completely shape his next manifesto when, terrified of an inevitable onslaught, he would ditch plans to, for example, end tax breaks for private schools to spend the £1.5billion raised on a better education for all kids.
It is vital that Labour improves communications and puts more effort into selling policies, including the case for cleaner air when pollution kills tens of thousands of people every year.
Extending the £12.50 Ulez charge to outer London to drive off the roads the fewer than one in 10 vehicles that cause the most pollution – a push the Tory Transport Department backs as well as Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan – is why Labour just fell short in Boris Johnson’s backyard.
But that’s no reason to abandon what, admittedly, is a crude move.
It’s a reason to work harder to win hearts and minds and enhance a scrappage scheme to help drivers replace killer motors.
Creating a more prosperous, fairer, sustainable, healthier, happier and greener country will inevitably mean Rishi Sunak and his incompetent government pollute the election with dirty tactics.
Yet confronting that head-on is, as most of Starmer’s MPs believe, preferable to shouting that Britain is broken and Labour will do, err, ahem, next to nothing to fix it.
Haunted by defeats, Starmer is understandably nervous, but Selby and Somerton signal where the momentum is in politics, not Uxbridge. Labour MP after Labour MP tell me they want him to be more confident, bolder, to act and sound like the winner he is becoming.
We’d have no NHS had Clement Attlee and Nye Bevan worried about how a discredited Tory Party would distort their NHS vision.