While the government was flailing over the exams fiasco last Sunday, a corner of leftwing Twitter was aflame with indignation at Labour’s role in the crisis – captured in the hashtag #starmerout. Instead of joining the students on the streets of Westminster shouting “fuck the algorithm”, the Labour leader had used an article in the Mail on Sunday to toughen up his insistence that children must return to school next month. The education chaos was perhaps the clearest example yet of how Starmer’s style of opposition differs from that of his predecessor. After he wrote that getting kids back to school was a “moral duty”, furious keyboard warriors attacked his cooperation with rightwing newspapers, asked why he hadn’t called for Gavin Williamson to resign, and dubbed him Captain Cardboard. This was against a backdrop of continued internecine tension, after Jeremy Corbyn himself joined a group claiming that party officials had sought to sabotage Labour’s chances in the general election of 2017 because they objected to his leadership. But Starmer’s allies are relaxed. “A thousand people on Twitter are just a thousand people on Twitter,” said one shadow cabinet member. “We know that from 2019.” Instead of placating Starmer’s leftwing detractors, Labour strategists believe the party’s best hope of unseating the Tories at the next general election lies in hammering home the gap between Boris Johnson’s promises and reality – and convincing the public that Starmer would do a better job.
They know from their frequent focus groups that many voters find Johnson likeable – so rather than attack him personally, they are keen to demonstrate that he is not up to the job of being prime minister. That approach was evident in the attack ads Labour launched at the height of the exams’ mess, juxtaposing black and white footage of Johnson promising the A-level results were “robust” and “dependable”, with a frazzled-looking Gavin Williamson announcing the U-turn. Almost every intervention Starmer and his senior colleagues makes includes the word “competence” as they try to chip away at the Tories’ reputation. “The Tories’ handling of these results sums up their handling of this pandemic: incompetent,” as he put it last week, after the discredited marking system was ditched. Starmer also frequently accuses Johnson of lacking “grip” – leaving it to his punchy deputy, Angela Rayner, to challenge the prime minister to “get off your backside”, as she did over the evictions ban. Rather than call for resignations – they have not demanded Williamson’s, even after the events of the past week – Starmer’s Labour favours calling for practical fixes. Recent polling suggests the public may be starting to share Labour’s analysis of the government’s performance. After a summer of bodges, late-night announcements and last-minute U-turns, a YouGov poll for the Times showed the Tories’ lead cut to just 2 percentage points, its lowest in more than a year. Starmer was also 4 points ahead of Johnson, by 35 to 31, on the question of who would make the best prime minister. It’s welcome information for team Starmer, after a separate ComRes poll for the same week saw Johnson leading with 43% to Starmer’s 30%. Frustrated Corbyn supporters feel Starmer’s approach lacks passion. The former party chair Ian Lavery says Labour needed to “get on the front foot”, both over the exams crisis and other issues. “We need to be challenging: we need to be the official opposition,” he said. One senior Corbyn ally complained of what they called a “lack of campaigning nous”, in Starmer’s operation. They argued that of the nine or 10 U-turns carried out by Johnson’s government, perhaps just one – the removal of the migrant visa surcharge – could be chalked up as a Labour victory. “Competence is all very well as a frame, and it seems to be working a bit: but at some point you’re going to need something deeper,” they said.
Starmer’s detractors complain that it was the footballer Marcus Rashford who was the face of the successful campaign to persuade the government to extend free school meals through the summer: though Labour’s plan to call a vote on the issue, forcing Tory MPs to take sides, may have helped focus minds in Downing Street. Corbyn set his attacks on the Tories in a narrative about the “rigged” system, disadvantaging working people – the opposite of his “for the many” slogan of 2017. But Labour strategists say before building an ideological story, let alone a manifesto, their first task is to get the party a hearing among groups of voters who rejected it last year, and have been drifting away for more than a decade. “You can set out a different ideological view once you’ve established competence – that comes first,” said one.