Keir Starmer’s pledge is the breath of fresh air our debased politics needs

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Evening Standard
Matthew d'Ancona10 May 2022
WEST END FINAL

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Indifference and disdain are the great solvents of a functioning democracy. When voters conclude that all politicians are as bad as one another, they cease to believe in the capacity of electoral choice to deliver significant change. 

They become susceptible to the sloganeering, performative tricks and blame game of populism — which is not about getting things done but identifying enemies (migrants, the BBC, the judiciary, the civil service), attributing blame (“fake news media”, the “liberal elite”) and ludicrously overblown rhetoric (remember when the disastrous test-and-trace system was routinely described by Boris Johnson as “world-beating”?).

This is why Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge yesterday to resign if fined for a breach of Covid rules is so important. After a torrid weekend of headlines about so-called beergate — the Indian meal at Labour’s constituency office in Durham on the evening of April 30 last year, now under police investigation — Starmer took a stand and made a pre-emptive statement of principle. 

He and his deputy,  Angela Rayner, will now resign if they receive fixed penalty notices for breaking Covid regulations. At the heart of this promise was his charge that the Tories had tried “to feed cynicism to get the public to believe all politicians are the same” — and his insistence that they are not.

Officially, Johnson’s allies are unimpressed by the Labour leader’s “priggish stunt”, scorning it as a means of distracting attention from local election results which — however disappointing for the Tories — showed that Starmer is not yet on course for Number 10. Behind the scenes, however, many senior Conservatives are full of trepidation.

As one Cabinet source puts it: “We could be in a fix. Imagine if Starmer is given the all-clear by the cops and survives. What happens if Sue Gray’s report [into the partygate allegations] is bad for Boris, or he gets more fixed penalty notices for different parties, or the privileges committee finds he misled the Commons? It all looks a lot worse.”

Some senior ministers are genuinely surprised by the brio of Starmer’s statement — his readiness to throw the dice — having generally seen him as a dull, managerial figure, selected by Labour in April 2020 to clean up after Jeremy Corbyn rather than to inspire the nation. They expected him to be on the defensive during the debate on today’s Queen’s Speech. Now, it is Johnson who is on the back foot.

Perspective is important: Starmer is seeking to overturn a perception of the political class that stretches back (at least) to the “cash-for-questions” debacle in 1994, via the “cash-for-honours” affair in 2006-2007, and the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009 — with many more infractions, allegations and sleazy disclosures along the way. It will take more than a single statement by an embattled politician to unring that particular bell and to persuade the public that politicians are more than a homogenous gang of self-serving tribalists. 

All the same: that single statement has dramatically changed the terms of trade. It says a lot for contemporary political culture that absolutely nobody thought that Johnson might do the honourable thing and resign when fined on April 12 (Rishi Sunak did consider that option and had to be dissuaded by party bosses from doing so).

Instead, the PM has outsourced his integrity to Tory MPs and a single metric: 54 of them must send in letters to trigger a vote of confidence in his leadership, a vote which he is still likely to win. Even now, Johnson insists that he will have to be forced out of Downing Street. In his case, the pangs of conscience are as weak as ever. I still find it hard to imagine him quitting Number 10 voluntarily, or — as things stand — his paralysed parliamentary party mustering the courage to sack him. 

Starmer, meanwhile, has gambled his leadership upon the outcome of a police investigation. By putting his fate squarely in the hands of the justice system, he has taken an unambiguously principled stand.  Again, it is remarkable that this should be remarkable. But such is the low-point to which our democracy has sunk. More than a quarter century has passed since Lord Nolan set out his seven principles of public life in 1995: selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, leadership. 

In the debased political world of 2022, those principles sound almost quaint. Starmer has taken a bold step towards making them meaningful once more. Over to you, Prime Minister.

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