Keir Starmer: The politics of the turn

Is changing your mind a good idea?

The Labor Party recently moved to new headquarters about 15 minutes from Parliament.

I was invited there to interview Sir Keir Starmer about his decision to abandon a long-standing promise to spend £28 billion a year on green industries in the future.

This is the juncture where every degree of twist is in plain sight.

A figure – £28 billion – was announced in 2021.

It was then watered down in its intended delivery last summer.

Finally this week was neglected.

Because, in the end, the party felt constrained by a number that they felt could only be politically passive; They were never likely to achieve that level of spending anyway, given their self-imposed economic rules.

Meanwhile, critics said that figure would lead to significant borrowing or tax hikes.

Added to this, senior figures are complicating themselves and openly conflicting about whether politics is over or not. Something had to give, and very quickly.

But trying to explain that the practical outcome will hardly change – as Sir Keir does – while ignoring the headline number is not an easy argument.

Even if this figure that caused them so much grief included, according to their expectations, huge sums of money, they did not actually know how to spend it.

But the Conservatives texted me claiming that Labour's position amounts to at least partly blaming Tory tax cuts which Labor itself supports and will not reverse, and to question the cost of policies to which they remain committed.

What about Liz Truss and her economic collapse?

All of this begs the question: Was Labor so naive of it to commit £28bn in the first place?

But back to that question I asked at the beginning; Is changing your mind a good thing or a bad thing?

Keir Starmer said of all the places he has worked, the only place where changing your mind when circumstances change is a bad thing is Westminster. It even has a label I used earlier: a U-turn.

He believes what he is doing amounts to a practical transformation that acknowledges changing circumstances.

Conservatives say he changes his mind forever.

But the conservatives themselves have made many shifts.

On HS2, on electric cars, on railway station ticket staff, on the smoldering fire of archaic EU-era laws to name but a few.

Maybe the original ideas were good. Maybe they weren't.

But is switching from one to another inherently a bad thing?

The challenge for an opposition leader, who is trying to define himself in the minds of voters, is that they are starting from a low base – people don't know much about them.

If you change your mind frequently after that, as Keir Starmer did, the process of introducing yourself and what you stand for becomes much more difficult.

You may be portrayed as not believing in anything.

Sir Keir's opponents will hope that the breadth of his changes of opinion – on bankers' bonuses, childcare in England and foreign aid, to name just three since he has been leader – will be a weakness they can expose.

They see £28bn as the latest case study.

Labor believes that a short period of being accused of shifting is better than months of being criticized for that big figure, £28 billion.

It may also be true that political opponents attack the party for retreating when it lacks alternative lines of attack.

Not least because the U-turn, often but not always, shifts this opponent from the position you are opposing to the position you have yourself.

Thus the U-turn eliminates the point of divergence.

Which brings me back to the phrase I find difficult to get out of my head to describe Labour's approach in recent months.

A phrase I first heard ringing in my ears at a business conference last fall.

Critics say Labor is eroding its differences with the Conservatives. They argue that the same thing should be around.

For others, it's about eliminating points of difference that opponents can weaponize.

After a critical few weeks, Labor cleared the target of canceling the promise.