Keir’s the Antidote

Usually, a party leadership victory would ensure front-page headlines, interview spreads, and immense exposure across the various news channel. However, the extraordinary times we are in meant that until recently Keir Starmer’s leadership had been a quiet one. Nevertheless, Boris Johnson has now been served notice by his opponent that he means business.

Last week the Labour leader put the PM to the sword over the death toll in care homes, unearthing the pre-March 12 government guidance to care homes that stated: “it remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected”. Then, referring to ONS figures that suggest at least 40% of COVID-19 deaths have occurred in care homes, he asked the PM to take responsibility and accept the government was too slow to act.

Instead of accepting, Johnson falsely claimed that the government advice put forward by Starmer was not true, but the leader of the opposition had the evidence to hand. After PMQs Starmer also issued a letter to the PM asking him to correct the record, but Johnson again refused to do so. Seemingly the PM is forgetting he is now standing across from a lawyer at the despatch box, and you would have thought he would have learned his lesson from the warning shot the previous week.

Two weeks ago, again at PMQs, the Labour leader asked the PM why he could possibly think the UK’s handling of COVID-19 has been a success considering we now had the second-highest death toll globally. When the PM responded by saying now was not the time to make international comparisons, Starmer waved around the government’s own comparison charts, highlighting his initial point.

As highlighted by Martin Fletcher, Johnson is everything that Keir Starmer is not: colourful, humorous, engaging, but, thankfully, Starmer is everything that Johnson is not: serious, honest, dependable, a grown-up, and a substantial record of achievement behind him. This allows the Labour leader to press home his advantage in the commons, something that his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn was never able to.

Of course, this has upset the former Labour leader’s supporters, and some on the left of the party have already begun accusing Starmer of being too soft, too lawyerly, and shown frustration at the high usage of the word ‘forensic’ in reference to his PMQ performances. What they fail to realise however through their blinkers, is this is the type of politics that we need and the type of politics that can topple the Prime Minister. Starmer’s strength is his opponent’s weakness.

Rather ironically, this is the type of politics that Corbyn promised to introduce when he was originally elected but was unable to deliver. When it came to commons styles, Corbyn was too like his opponent but was never going to be able to beat the PM at what he does best – bluster.

The last few weeks have already started to show a slight shift in the polls. When Starmer became leader, Labour were roughly 20-25% behind in the polls, showing the enormity of the task ahead. However, this has now lowered to between 15-20%. In the same period, the PM and the government’s approval numbers have also tanked. After lockdown, the government had a net approval rating of +51%, now it is -2%. In the same period, the PM has seen his net approval rating drop from +44 to +22.

He is now even behind the leader of the opposition, who currently has a net approval of +23 but does lead him regarding who would make the best PM, 42 to 28. Although, this has shifted 7 points at the same time. Not too much can be read into the polls at this point in this election cycle, and because Starmer is still unknown to swathes of the public his approval and the best PM ratings are still likely to fluctuate. Nevertheless, he is already in a much more positive position than Corbyn was.

There is no doubt that the last few weeks have put the government on the defensive. A Downing Street official confessed that Johnson was “rattled” by his recent commons encounters with the Labour leader, and Starmer was also able to secure the Telegraph’s front-page splash on the 75^th anniversary of VE Day with this call for the government to protect the wartime generation at risk in the nation’s care homes.

The right-wing press are also on the back foot, and they are already out to try and discredit him. Yet, the worst that the Mail on Sunday could find was that he owns a seven-acre field next to his parents’ Surrey home which Keir purchased for his disabled mother to house donkeys that she and her husband had rescued and cared for. Unfortunately for the Tories, unlike his predecessor Corbyn the current Labour leader is rather squeaky clean.

As Fletcher also stresses, although it is early in proceedings, PMQs matters. Winning PMQ’s does make it to those who are politically interested, and it helps to rally the troops within the party. There is no doubt that the task will be tougher once the commons are again full and Johnson has a barking crowd of Tory MPs behind him heckling the Labour leader. But it will not change the fact that Starmer has the PM’s number when it comes to the details, and has won the first few battles in the war.