This week in Brexitland, April 13, 2023

Some of you are confused as to what Labour’s current political strategy might be. I think I’ve figured it out - and I can summarise it in one sentence

The blowback from the left and centre-left when Labour put out those recent attack ads on Sunak was nothing new. For a long time now, people on the left half of politics haven’t liked a lot of what Starmer has been doing. There’s been complaints about him not being radical enough, or clear enough in what he believes. Stuff like those attack ads make Starmer seem to many on the left like he’s unclear on what he’s trying to achieve, attempting to say or what he wants you to think about him or his party.

One thing I can tell you is that none of it is random or the result of flailing about, looking for direction. I think Starmer and those around him know exactly what they are doing. Some of you won’t like it; many of you might even hate it. Yet I’m now convinced this is the basic idea the Labour’s leaders office is pursuing. And I can summarise it in one sentence.

At next election, Labour will attempt to be the Conservatives while the actual Tories are portrayed as UKIP.

To expand on this, Starmer or someone around him (the latter more likely) figured out that what the country is crying out for is a Conservative party. A wet as hell, patrician, not afraid of a big state Conservative party, but a Conservative party nonetheless. After the chaos of the Brexit years, what people are after is stability. A government that will look at things as free from ideology as necessary and just try and run the country in the most pragmatic way possible. A government that will identify a problem, come up with a solution and then carry it out. No more “big ideas” that fall flat, like Brexit or socialism in one country.

There are pundits on the right who will point to this as “technocracy” and claim it isn’t what people genuinely want. Of course, you can’t be entirely technocratic - but you do have to take the competency part of technocratic governance and run with it. I get that you need to be more than a technocrat to be PM at the moment. Yet as Liz Truss demonstrated, you do need to be a technocrat underneath it all. When people are desperate for good, solid government after years of bad government, you have to convince them that you will be able to provide that.

On the flip side, there are pundits on the left who will say this confirms what they knew all along, Starmer as closet Tory. Except what they miss is that not nearly enough people in Britain want a socialist government to make such a government a possibility. I suppose as a non-socialist, that’s an easy thing for me to say, but that doesn’t make it any less true. In 2017, they got as close as could ever be imagined, and they were still miles and miles off. Coming 65 seats short of the most marginal victory imaginable isn’t anywhere close to winning. And again, let me stress: when I say Labour want to be the Conservatives at the next election, I mean a version of the Conservative party we haven’t seen in over 50 years; an interventionist, patrician Tory party, one that has nothing to do with Thatcherism whatsoever. A virtually non-ideological governing machine.

Starmer is clearly offering himself up as a prime minister who can pull this off, this ability to be a relatively conservative technocrat who nonetheless understands what people actually care about. You might say that Sunak seems like a clever guy and the next election will just be is two clever blokes in suits, battling it out on competence, and Sunak will have an in-built advantage given he is PM already.

Except, that’s where the UKIP stuff comes into play. If you can paint Sunak as weak, fronting a party full of swivel-eyed maniacs who have plundered the country over the course of several years, then Starmer charges ahead. That’s what the attack ads were about. Setting up Sunak as ineffectual, as in, unable to lead the country out of its problems mostly because his party is too awful and incompetent and he doesn’t have the personality to control it. Also, Sunak as culpable - he is isn’t something new and shiny, he’s cut from the same cloth as Johnson and Truss. He’s just a continuation of the same thing. In other words, this government not only doesn’t have what it takes to solve the problems we currently face, it doesn’t even have the ability to avoid making those problems markedly worse. We’re in an emergency situation here - and Starmer is the man to save us. An old school Tory PM in Labour clothing who will swoop in and get the job done.

And as it happens, Sunak has allowed himself to be played into this corner. To take a relevant example: yes, a lot of people in England want the small boats problem resolved. But that’s just it - they want it resolved. They want the government to figure out a way to stop it from happening any longer. They don’t want UKIPPy speeches about “swarms” and ridiculous policies like Rwanda that do nothing, they want the government to figure out a way to make it stop and then action it.

You see, the Tories figured that becoming UKIP would gain them back all the votes they lost to the right over the years. The problem with this strategy being, this only works if you don’t lose anything from your “core” 30%. When Corbyn was Labour leader, which is when this strategy became embedded within the Tories, they could get away with this. Now, we have a Labour leader who is willing to park their tanks on Tory territory. As a result, the Conservatives now look woefully exposed in the middle of the park.

We don’t have to guess as to whether this might work at the next election for Starmer either - the polls are telling us already that this narrative is becoming embedded within the electorate. The Tories have killed the UKIP/Brexit Party/Reform insurgency on their right, not because Brexit happened but because they became UKIP. Alt-right flavoured, anti-EU, pro-Brexit, anti-immigration (in name, if not practice, which is even worse in a strategic sense), anti-refugee, “The island is full, mate”, “Let’s own the libs” obsessed weirdos. And they somehow convinced themselves that they represent most of the country with this approach, even when the polls have told them solidly for a long time now that this is simply not the case.

For someone like me, who would sort of like a One Nation Tory-esque government, one that favours enterprise, ambition and aspiration, yet not at the expense of good public services, the NHS or a functioning welfare system; one that understands Britain’s role in the world and cherishes it; one that sees British institutions as valuable and to be protected; one that wants to deal with the world as it is as opposed to how one would ideally like it to be, such a Starmer-led government seems like a good idea. I would like him to be more anti-Brexit, but I understand that you don’t get everything you want in politics and I feel like that battle will be far easier to fight with Labour in office than the Tories anyhow.

Meanwhile, The Conservatives are helping Starmer in his mission, as people like Braverman seek to make the Tories even more UKIP-esque. A broad, mushy Conservative party that looks competent enough to tackle Britain’s problems could get more than 50% of the vote. UKIP, if you will recall, got 13% at the height of its reach. I’ll leave you all to do the maths.

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