Something similar is happening with the strikes expected this week. The Tories call them “Labor strikes” and provoke Kir Starmer to denounce the unions. It makes no sense to complain that it is up to the ministers, not the Labor Party, to prevent the disturbance. The unions have declared strikes and are financing the Labor Party. It is no surprise, then, that the Labor Party will not oppose them. Most Labor MPs say they would like the strikes to be called off, but say the government is responsible. This indicates to the public that it disapproves of labor action and to the unions that the Labor Party supports their wage demands. Last week, however, Wes Streeting, the Shadow Health Secretary appointed to replace Starmer, went further. “If I were a member of RMT,” he said, “I would vote for the strike.” Streeting’s intervention tells us a lot. First, about where power remains in the modern Labor Party. Streeting, far to the Labor right, knows that in order to become a leader he must suck the unions and the party activists. If power remains here, voters can be confident that the interests and values of unions and activists will take precedence over their own if and when Labor returns to office. The second thing that Streeting’s intervention tells us is about the dishonesty of the Labor position. After his comments caused a stir, he apologized to the shady cabinet – but only for the bad publicity he had caused. Most importantly, the incident reveals how weak Starmer is within his own party. It is true that Labor is ahead in the polls, but with eighty percent of voters saying the Prime Minister is a liar, their six-point lead seems limited. Certainly, it indicates that it is not in the way for the majority government. The Labor Party is likely to win the Wakefield by-election this Thursday, but a victory there will not convince skeptics that Starmer is doing well enough. He may soon be out of a job anyway. Having conquered the moral high ground for breaking the law and the dishonesty of Boris Johnson, Starmer is under police investigation for his own behavior and has looked financially realistic as he defends himself. Promising to resign if fined, he allowed his MPs to plan and campaign for his replacement. The new narrative in Westminster is that Starmer is just too boring to attract audiences. This view became popular after the publication of a survey last week by the polling company, JL Partners. This survey found that people complained that Starmer was boring, but other words voters used to describe him told us more: weak, meek, neutral, unreliable, useless, hypocritical. One complaint that is heard over and over again from voters is that Starmer is never constructive: all he does is whine about her advantage afterwards. The perception that Starmer is boring is just one symptom of two more serious problems for Labor. The first is that neither Starmer nor his party have a compelling analysis of what is wrong with the country, let alone a plan to fix things. The economy is in a dangerous situation. The growth has been anemic for years. Wages are no higher in real terms than they were a decade and a half ago. Productivity growth is poor. Regional differences show no signs of diminishing. And inflation makes us all poorer. But what is Labor’s explanation for all this controversy? Of course, after Corbin’s years, Starmer wants to lure Labor into what he believes is more modest. But if he believes he can do this by dragging it back into the old, ruined old Blair consensus, he is seriously mistaken. A mediocre proposal to fix our financial problems requires original thinking and significant change. This is true for the whole economy, but strikes are a good example of the challenge. The interests of employees should be better balanced against the interests of capital. However, the solution is not to abuse the powers of the unions, but to empower workers through legal protection and greater involvement in corporate governance. The second problem is that neither Starmer nor Labor are honest with the public about who and what they are. Starmer presents himself as the rational man who tries to stay out of the cultural war and tame his most ideological party. But sometimes the mask slips. He said, for example, that it is wrong to say that only one woman has a cervix and promised to change the Gender Recognition Act. He kneels for the Black Lives Matter and speaks of “systemic racism,” a controversial theory that claims that whites benefit from systematic social discrimination against minorities. And the list goes on. Starmer pays tribute to the royal family, but boasted of his republicanism. He says he accepts Brexit, but did everything he could to stop it and promises to change the agreement we have with Brussels. He won the leadership of the Labor Party by throwing himself to the left, but then betrayed his supporters. Even his promise to resign if fined by the police, as former Labor MP Ian Austin points out, took him days to decide on what he claimed was a matter of “honor and integrity”. Starmer, a lawyer by descent, may not have the knowledge to face the great financial challenges we face. Maybe his party just lacks the originality to put new ideas in the country and is very convinced of its ideological cultural nihilism. But the problem that Labor has is much more than personalities. Their problem is that they try, quite blatantly, to hide their true instincts and beliefs, and have almost nothing to say about the issues that matter most. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that it is no longer ahead – even with a government as chaotic as this.
