What Keir Starmer needs to do if he really wants to land blows on the government

Making his biggest speech of the year in an empty room in Doncaster, during a week dominated by coronavirus, was hardly what his spin doctors ordered for Keir Starmer. In five months as Labour leader, his only party audiences have been virtual.

Yet Starmer managed to make his mark. The media coverage would have been bigger in normal times, but it would also have lifted the lid on the simmering tensions between Starmer and the Corbyn left.

Starmer’s “new leadership” slogan is about the dividing lines between him and Boris Johnson, as well as a rejection of Jeremy Corbyn. Some of his pitch is too bland: who doesn’t want Britain to be the best country to grow up in and grow old in?

But Starmer was right to emphasise patriotism. The most important sentence in his speech to the virtual conference was: “Never again will Labour go into an election not being trusted on national security, with your job, with your community and with your money.”

His left-wing critics find the patriotic medicine hard to swallow. For some, it dilutes the party’s internationalism, but it shouldn’t. Labour tried their approach under Corbyn and it failed, in the end spectacularly. The party’s dire electoral predicament means – shock news – it needs to appeal to millions who voted Tory last December. The long road back to power runs through the red wall seats in the north and Midlands which turned blue.

Deborah Mattinson, whose new book Beyond the Red Wall was written after conducting polls and focus groups in these constituencies, identified five things Labour must do to win them back. It must articulate its own brand of patriotism; show it would not waste public money; that it doesn’t take working class voters for granted; reflect their aspirations and offer an optimistic vision for the country. Labour will have its work cut out and, crucially, cannot expect these voters to suddenly admit they made a terrible mistake in December and rush into Starmer’s arms.

Left-wingers are alarmed by the lack of policy under Starmer; they fear that, after suggesting during Labour's leadership contest he would not ditch the Corbyn agenda, he is now preparing to do just that. They do have a point about the need to lock in the younger voters Corbyn won over. But coronavirus gives Starmer time. As Rishi Sunak’s rushed jobs package following Johnson’s latest restrictions showed, the ground shifts under the politicians’ feet. I suspect the pandemic might also give Starmer cover to move on from Corbynism, as the world will look very different.

One sign of Starmer’s early success is that the Tories struggle to lay a glove on him. Their response this week was to claim Starmer offered “more of the same old Labour” and wants to “build on” Corbyn’s “far left economic plans.” They will need to do better than that. No wonder Johnson complains to aides about the lack of attack lines for prime minister’s questions.

Scotland will be more fruitful territory. Starmer has dodged the Tories’ Brexit bullets so far but next May’s Scottish parliament elections are a headache for Labour. Starmer conceded this week the SNP would have a mandate for another independence referendum if it wins a majority. The Tories will be able to reprise their 2015 attack on Ed Miliband: Labour’s only route to Downing Street is a post-election deal with the SNP.

Starmer doesn’t like doing personal stuff but began the unavoidable task this week of introducing himself to the voters. Yet he can’t climb the electoral mountain all on his own. His opinion poll ratings are better than his party’s. To convince the public the tarnished Labour brand has changed requires a more energetic team approach. His cabinet needs to “come out of the shadows” – intriguingly, a phrase Starmer used about the party in his speech – and land more blows on the government on issues other than coronavirus. True, the pandemic leaves less bandwidth for attacks the media would lap up in normal times. But the first step towards regaining power is to be an effective opposition.

Like Johnson, Starmer has a difficult balancing act on coronavirus. Labour supports the government’s individual measures to avoid the charge of being unpatriotic in a national crisis, while rightly criticising the government’s mistakes. Yet there are so many unforced errors that Labour doesn’t need to pull its punches. “It’s time to take the gloves off,” one senior Labour figure conceded. The opposition now needs to live up to its name.