nivek
As Above So Below
'We can't call everyone racist - I don't care what he tells me to do': The brutal comments Labour MPs and ministers are sharing with me after Keir Starmer's speech... and why it's his final and fatal blunder
Yesterday Keir Starmer’s MPs were cheering. This morning they are panicking. The exuberant mood at Labour conference that followed the Prime Minister’s full-frontal attack on Nigel Farage has been replaced by one of alarm. And a mounting fear their leader has made a major strategic error.‘Saying Farage is racist, and Reform are racist... but Reform’s supporters aren’t racist just isn’t going to fly,’ one MP told me. ‘All people will hear is, “Reform are racists” and think we’re talking about them.’ This view is especially prevalent in those Red Wall seats where Labour MPs are facing a direct threat from Farage and his party. But it is not confined to them.
Yesterday evening, Dianne Abbott, not exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to levelling charges of racism, articulated the concerns of many former colleagues when she said on Newsnight, ‘I’m all for people giving him [Farage] a good kicking... but the danger is if you give him too much free publicity you turn him into a bigger figure than he is.’
Starmer’s ministers and backbenchers agree with her. And they are privately expressing despair at the way the conference speech has been handled. Their first concern is over the way in which there again seems to have been no proper coordination of Downing Street’s aggressive new strategy.
On Sunday, Keir Starmer explicitly stated he believed the changes announced by Reform to the indefinite Leave To Remain (ILR) status of hundreds of thousands of migrants was ‘racist’. But a few hours later, the Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood appeared at a fringe meeting and confirmed she was looking at her own major reform of ILR.
‘I don’t understand that stuff about the racism at the heart of Reform’s immigration policy,’ one senior party grandee told me. ‘If their immigration policy is racist then so is our new immigration policy.’
There is also undisguised fury at Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy – seen as one of Starmer’s few remaining senior allies – for his ludicrously hyperbolic claim that Nigel Farage had once flirted with the Hitler Youth. And anger at the failure to give a clear line over whether Farage personally should be described as a racist. ‘I’m not going to be saying that,’ one minister revealed to me. ‘It just plays into his hands. I don’t care what No 10 tells me to do.’
Another issue is the way in which Starmer has opted to take the battle to the Reform leader on territory of his opponent’s choosing. One of the supposed advantages of government is that ministers stand a chance of setting the political agenda. But by opting to confront Farage over his favourite issue, immigration, cabinet ministers fear Starmer is picking a fight he can’t win.
‘It’s very simple,’ one minister said. ‘If we’re talking about immigration, Nigel Farage is winning. That’s it. ‘Until we come up with a way of stopping the boats, any month in which the political conversation is dominated by that issue is a month that brings Farage closer to power.’
Yet, as a result of the speech and Starmer’s new approach, there is now even less prospect of him finding a policy solution to the small boat crisis. Over the past year No 10 aides have been discussing a number of potentially radical solutions to get to grips with illegal mmigration.
One has been the Labour government’s very own ‘Rwanda’ scheme to ensure some form of offshore processing.
Another involves moves to break Britain free from the clutches of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Now, in the face of internal opposition, those solutions have been quietly ditched – which is why Starmer chose to unveil his new national ID card scheme. As one minister explained to me: ‘He knows he has to say something about immigration. But he also knows the really tough measures will go down like a cup of cold sick with the party.
‘So that’s why he announced it. Labour MPs and activists aren’t instinctively sold on ID cards. But they’ll just about tolerate them. They won’t put up with our own Rwanda scheme, or ditching the ECHR.’ And that is what lies at the heart of Starmer’s new, no-holds-barred attack on Farage. It isn’t really aimed at shifting the national debate on immigration or even neutralising the Reform surge.
It’s largely aimed at shoring up his position internally within his party – and staving off the leadership challenge he knows is imminent. But that challenge is still coming. And when his MPs do finally move against Starmer, they will deploy yesterday’s speech against him.
Keir Starmer has now reframed his premiership. By devoting so much of his speech to Reform, he has defined himself as the man who can take on Nigel Farage in hand-to-hand combat – and win. But he can’t win. Starmer is now the most unpopular Prime Minister in British political history. Farage is a populist insurgent, unencumbered by power, running against a deeply unpopular mid-term government with a general election still years away.
All he needs to do is continue surfing the wave of national protest. A wave that is set to morph into a Tsunami when Rachel Reeves stands up and delivers the budget that will finally prove her pledge not to raise any more taxes was just ‘another Labour lie’.
Yes, Farage and his supporters have been momentarily forced on to the back foot by Starmer’s attacks. Their claim that the Prime Minister’s words risk inciting political violence is staggeringly hypocritical given their recent embrace of Lucy Connolly, the women who tweeted ‘Set fire to all the f****** hotels full of the bastards for all I care. While you’re at it take the treacherous government and politicians with them.’
But political gravity will start to reassert itself. And when it does, Keir Starmer will come to realise his furious assault against Nigel Farage represents his own Charge of the Light Brigade.
Next May, the country goes to the polls in the local elections. The ballot boxes sit waiting for him like the Russian guns. The community centres and village halls that hold them will become his own Valley of Death. At which point his MPs will turn to him and say, ‘you told us you would defeat Nigel Farage. But you haven’t. He’s routed you. We now need someone who can really take the fight to Reform.’
Keir Starmer thinks his speech yesterday was a triumph. But his colleagues now see it for what it is – a final and fatal blunder.
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