The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right by Oliver Eagleton

Author:Oliver Eagleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Verso

Enter Johnson

Corbyn’s media appearances suffered because of LOTO’s failure to resolve these internal disputes. When questioned on Brexit, he became evasive. The quality that distinguished him from other politicians – his ability to say what he really thought – had vanished, and the Starmer– McDonnell faction came to control the party messaging. By late July, once May had resigned and Boris Johnson had swept to power, the battle-lines for the upcoming general election were drawn. The left-populist approach to Brexit that Labour could have taken in 2016, and tried to take in 2017, had now been appropriated by the Conservatives. Labour were the establishment; the Tories were the insurgents. Labour was preoccupied with obscure parliamentary exercises; the Tories trumpeted their determination to fulfil the democratic mandate of the referendum. ‘The reality now’, Johnson thundered in parliament, ‘is that we are the party of the people. We are the party of the many, and they are the party of the few. We will take this country forwards, and they will take it backwards.’ 87

Starmer and Corbyn clashed over how to respond to Johnson. Sir Keir argued that it was time to align with the Remain camp and announce that Labour would campaign for EU membership in any future referendum. The leader was more partial to Milne’s plan, set out in an 18 August memo, which called on Labour to recalibrate its 2017 strategy: break through the Brexit binary, it said, and present a ‘real challenge to the establishment and the elites – while painting Boris Johnson’s Tories as untrustworthy, dangerous and in the pockets of the super-rich’. Aware that Starmer would never stick to this script, LOTO decided to remove him from the list of shadow cabinet election spokespeople. 88

But despite Milne’s efforts, the attempt to reclaim the populist energy from Johnson was bulldozed by two developments in which Starmer played a crucial role. The first was the Benn Act, brought to parliament on 4 September. This was a plan drawn up by Starmer in collaboration with a group of Tory rebels – led by Philip Hammond, David Gauke and Oliver Letwin – to delay Brexit beyond the scheduled date of 31 October. Although LOTO favoured the idea of staving off a no-deal exit, Starmer ensured that Corbyn and his team played no role in its execution. The legislation was instead put in Hilary Benn’s name and framed as an initiative of cross-party Remainers. This immediately punctured Labour’s anti-establishment rhetoric and legitimized Johnson’s ‘people versus parliament’ narrative. The new PM labelled it the ‘Surrender Act’ and expelled the twenty-one Conservative MPs who helped to vote it through – stating that he refused to be intimidated by ‘enemies of the people’.

The second development that undermined Labour’s election plan was the government’s prorogation of parliament. On 28 August it emerged that Johnson was planning to suspend the Commons session for five weeks, ostensibly to prevent the establishment from thwarting Brexit. In fact, the ensuing sequence of events had been carefully choreographed by Johnson’s chief strategist, Dominic Cummings.

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