Keir Starmer’s ambition could let him unite Labour – if it wants to be united

Emily Thornberry has described Sir Keir Starmer as being “on the right”, and accused him of plotting his leadership bid while Labour plunged to its catastrophic election defeat. Both charges are wrong.

Starmer is not a “Blairite”, despite his critics’ attempt to pin the most unwanted label in politics on him. He had a low profile during the general election because Jeremy Corbyn put him in his box. Thornberry knows this, as she suffered the same fate. Nonetheless, needing to make waves to secure nominations from 33 constituency parties to stay in the race, Thornberry told ITV’s Calling Peston podcast that Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey are “two machine politicians ... Rebecca on the left and Keir on the right”.

Yet Starmer’s soft-left credentials are as strong as Thornberry’s, or Lisa Nandy’s. Indeed, some Labour lawyers regard Starmer as “too left-wing”. Some members of this club recall that unlike them, Starmer’s goal was not to get rich but “to do the ethical thing”; the human rights specialist could have made a lot more money by taking a different path.

But the former director of public prosecutions, who did not become an MP until he was 52, does have one thing in common with Tony Blair: he is very ambitious.

Starmer is Labour’s equivalent of Michael Heseltine, who allegedly mapped out his life plan to become prime minister at the age of 55 on the back of an envelope, though he doesn’t remember it. Heseltine became deputy PM but never landed the top job; Starmer still has a chance of doing so.

Labour will need such ambition if it is to get back in the game. Because he’s on the soft left, Starmer would be able to unite the party’s right and hard-left factions, just as Neil Kinnock did in 1983, when he began Labour’s last fightback after a disastrous defeat. Kinnock never got much credit, because he lost two general elections. But Blair could not have started the process from the right flank, which would have split the party.

After four years of debilitating sectarian strife under Corbyn, the infighting must end. Labour’s overlapping circles – hard left, soft left and right – need to merge. I suspect the biggest circle is the soft left, so that needs to spread out from the middle. An unfair perception that she was on the right damaged the prospects of Jess Phillips, who withdrew from the race this week.

There are some signs that the party’s shattering defeat has forced many members who liked Corbynism to see its shortcomings. Nominations by constituency parties reflect this: Starmer has the support of 32, Nandy and Long-Bailey seven each and Thornberry three.

Nandy, also on the soft left, could unite the party’s warring factions. However, I doubt that Long-Bailey could. If she won, there could be defections from the right circle, possibly an eventual split into socialist and social democratic parties.

True, Change UK’s fate does not bode well for a breakaway; it had 11 MPs less than a year ago, none of whom is now in the Commons. Nobody wants to threaten a split while Labour’s leadership contest is underway, and for now, the mood on the party’s right is to stay and fight. But there is chatter behind the scenes. One senior Labour figure told me: “If Rebecca wins, it would be the end of the road for some people. There would be defections.”

Although Starmer is the front-runner and Nandy is mounting a strong challenge, Long-Bailey is still very much in the race. Her allies say she has had a good week. On Friday night she won the backing of the Unite union, and she has a formidable machine behind her. She has Momentum, although she lacks the momentum Corbyn had in his 2015 and 2016 leadership campaigns.

Long-Bailey insists she would not be Corbyn Mark II. But by giving his leadership “10 out of 10” she revealed her true colours, and underlined why some doubt her pledge to “take the party in completely different directions” to Corbyn. While she understandably resents “insinuations” that Corbyn and John McDonnell would pull her strings, one shadow cabinet colleague said: “I don’t know what Rebecca really stands for. She is a blank page, Labour’s Theresa May.”

Labour shows signs of wanting to move on from the Corbyn era, and begin the long march back to power. The leadership election result will tell us whether this is true. As one Labour frontbencher put it: “This year will decide whether we are finished as a party capable of winning elections, or we start a process of recovery.”