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Keir Starmer conned his party. What would stop him conning the country?

On Brexit, immigration and the economy, we know the Labour leader will say anything to get into power

Keir Starmer speaks to the media during a visit to Glasgow

Over the weekend Keir Starmer said he would reform the NHS by “using the private sector”. Defending his position, he said: “There will always be people who say I wouldn’t do that.”

One such person is Starmer himself. Just three years ago, running to become Labour leader, he declared: “Public services should be in public hands, not making profits for shareholders. [I will] support common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water,” and “end outsourcing in our NHS, local government and justice system”. This was his “moral case for socialism”.

The broken promise is not limited to the health service. The commitment to nationalise the energy companies has been junked. The promise to “defend free movement as we leave the EU” has been dropped. The pledge to end outsourcing in the criminal justice system is not only abandoned: Starmer now cites using the private sector as evidence of his reforming credentials when he ran the Crown Prosecution Service.

It may be tempting for Conservatives and swing voters to find this reassuring, to conclude that the Labour leader is ridding himself of Left-wing policies and forcing his party to the so-called “centre ground”. But it would be rash to rush to such a conclusion. For if Starmer was prepared to mislead his electorate before he became Labour leader, why would he not do the same with the wider electorate as he attempts to become prime minister?

The abandoned policies are too numerous, the handbrake turns too sharp, the excuses too often contradictory, for any other explanation. Starmer used to say, after the Brexit referendum, that membership of the single market was a red line for him. Now he says the same, but his position has flipped by 180 degrees: first he said Britain had to be in the single market; now he says that would be unacceptable.

Sometimes Labour say they abandoned the promise to nationalise the trains and utility companies because “it’s not within our fiscal rules to be spending billions of pounds nationalising things”. On other occasions they say it is because nationalisation was “a commitment in a manifesto that secured our worst result since 1935”.

Margaret Hodge, the veteran Labour MP, says Starmer and his allies were very open – in private of course – about their willingness to bend the truth to win power. She recounted how one supporter told her: “I don’t mind what he does, so long as he wins,” since this would free him to do as he wished. “Is Keir lying to get the job, and will he then change?” Hodge asked herself. “That’s what this person was saying to me as a way of promoting Keir.”

The new year has brought a new phase to Labour’s political strategy. In the coming months we will see the outlines of a policy agenda that will inform the manifesto for the election. But as Starmer made his big speech last week, the same problems were visible: a conflict between the national interest and his own beliefs; and a willingness to say not what he believes or what he would do, but whatever it will take to win.

On the strikes in the NHS and on the railways, Starmer insisted the Government must “get in the room and compromise”. Much like his position on the Brexit negotiations, his instinct is to sit down with the other side and then give them what they want. And yet with the strikes he knows he cannot do that, so his approach is to attack ministers for not giving the unions more, while refusing to say how much more he would give.

The spectre of the unions loomed as Starmer made his speech. Whatever ministers do to limit the right to strike, he said, a Labour government would repeal it. So no conversations about minimum service agreements, no debate about strikes among emergency service workers, and no lessons for Britain from other countries.

As part of his plan to form an industrial strategy, Starmer said he would “convene a real industrial partnership between business and unions”. But while we need to give workers a stronger voice and better protections at work, this corporatism would stunt industrial strategy from the start. Fewer workers than ever (just 15 per cent in manufacturing) are members of trade unions. The biggest unions are in the public sector, while the powerful unions in the private sector – in former nationalised industries like the railways and Royal Mail – often strike over workplace reform and new technologies. Partnership with Mick Lynch is not a recipe for growth.

Starmer is of course no Jeremy Corbyn, but neither is he Tony Blair. His beliefs, according to those who know him best, are solidly Left-wing. Among his first commitments as leader were promises to make it easier for people to change gender, and new laws based on discredited theories of structural racism. He flirts with constitutional change – more asymmetric devolution to Scotland and Wales but no equivalent for England, a replacement for the House of Lords, and even electoral reform – that seeks to disadvantage the Tories permanently.

On the economy Starmer says he knows he cannot spend his way to success. But there is not a single department in which Labour say they would spend less. The mantra remains to attack “Tory cuts” and spending promises, implied and explicit, abound. £28 billion a year on climate change. £60 billion on an energy efficiency programme. Further billions on scrapping tuition fees, restoring international aid, increasing welfare payments and more.

Of course Labour might put up some taxes the Tories would not, but without sustained economic growth – and they have no plan for the tough microeconomic reforms needed to deliver it – Starmer will find himself in the same fiscal hole he complains about today. Without spending restraint, taxes and borrowing – watched carefully by the bond markets – will inevitably go up, and interest rates may follow.

We know from his record Starmer will not feel bound by the promises he makes. But on the constitution, the culture wars, immigration, the economy and Brexit, that does not mean we do not know what he will do.

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