Don’t write Keir Starmer off yet – he is fighting back

Keir Starmer’s leadership is about to enter a dangerous phase. With the expected loss of Batley and Spen in the by-election on Thursday, the chorus of doom mongers – those who want him to fail and those who fear he will – will grow. As ever, though, there is no obvious alternative leader who could do a better job. And now there are signs of the Starmer fightback.

The least important thing is that Labour’s drift in the national opinion polls has bottomed out. The vaccine boost still sustains Boris Johnson and the Conservatives, but its effects show signs of weakening. That doesn’t mean Labour will advance, but it suggests that doing so might be easier.

Starmer appears to have been both ruthless and tactful in rebuilding his team. Jenny Chapman, previously his political secretary, has been moved to the front bench in the House of Lords, where she will take on David Frost, the Brexit minister. Morgan McSweeney, who was Starmer’s chief of staff, has moved to a general election planning role; and Ben Nunn, the communications director, has left to “do something different”.

What matters is who replaces them, but already Starmer has made one good decision: to appoint Matthew Doyle as his temporary head of communications. Doyle is an experienced press secretary, who worked in No 10 for Tony Blair. Starmer has previously shied away from hiring people too obviously associated with the most electorally successful government in Labour history, but seems to have realised that basic competence is more important than appeasing the dwindling band of irreconcilables among the party membership.

Another sign of the fightback was a news report last week in the Daily Mail. Under the headline, “Starmer: Use yacht cash to tackle crime”, the Labour leader was reported as calling for the royal yacht to be scrapped, with the savings used to crack down on antisocial behaviour. Starmer was quoted as accusing Boris Johnson of being “soft on crime, soft on the causes of crime”.

What was significant was not just the echo of Blair’s phrase, but that Labour was attacking the government on an issue that cuts through to the voters – and that it was doing so in a Conservative newspaper. Starmer made a mark as the newly elected Labour leader at the start of the pandemic by writing in The Daily Telegraph, accusing Johnson of letting down the Second World War generation by failing to protect people in care homes.

But the Daily Mail is, if anything, considered more hostile territory. Jeremy Corbyn refused to deal with the paper at all, but Ed Miliband would not talk to its journalists either – not least because the Mail had accused his father, Ralph, of “hating Britain”. Blair and Alastair Campbell, his press secretary, both loathed the Mail, but thought it essential that they engage with the paper (Gordon Brown had a surprisingly good relationship with Paul Dacre, its editor at the time).

The fact that Starmer is prepared to take the fight to the Tories in the pages of the Mail – which eclipsed The Sun as Britain’s bestselling newspaper last year – shows that he means business.

Yours,

John Rentoul

Chief political commentator