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a year ago
STARMER PROFILE : The signs were there from the start!
That line in the Guardian's Decca Aitkenhead interview with Starmer (March 2017) where she makes a suggestion as to why he'd entered into politics in the first place... “If he didn’t believe he would one day move into No 10, I doubt he would be there at all,” got me wondering whether or not this was a fair observation. So, I did a little digging...
15th May 2015 : One week after he’s elected as an MP, we learn that some Labour activists are urging him to stand for party leadership. They even set up a Facebook page and plan a Twitter storm and the Guardian reports that he has support from former City minister Lord Myners, who funded Gordon Brown’s leadership campaign.
13th July 2015 : Barely 3 months into his new job as Member of Parliament for Holborn and St Pancras, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, is now reportedly advocating that journalists accused of phone hacking or bribing public officials should have a public interest defence in law. Coincidentally, this announcement precedes a speech that Starmer is expected to give, that same evening, at the London Press Club, during a debate : ‘800 years after the Magna Carta, do we have a free press?’ The sell-out event is expected to host the likes of Trevor Kavanagh, the Sun’s associate editor; Peter Kellner, president of the polling organisation, YouGov; and Jodie Ginsberg, chief executive of Index on Censorship. It's clear that courting the right wing media was on the agenda, right from the get go.
29th September 2015 : Barely 5 months since Starmer was elected as an MP and just 2 weeks after Jeremy Corbyn was unanimously elected leader of the Labour party , Starmer attacks Corbyn at the Labour Party conference. He warns people that Corbyn is "not the Messiah." and effectively proclaims himself as some sort of expert on Corbyn. He implies that Corbyn’s "qualities" were not up to the job and that members were mistaken when they voted for him. He also accuses Corbyn of not having the "radical, ambitious project” that Labour needs to win elections and then warns conference that the party needs to think past old issues like “austerity" and, instead, focus on issues that will matter come the next election, like boosting investment and skills (and yet, here we are in 2023, austerity has never bitten quite so hard and Starmer still thinks it’s a none issue). Anyone would think, listening to him speak at the conference, that it was Starmer who had won the leadership election and was laying out ‘his’ vision for the next 5yrs. No doubt, a clever and ambitious man like Starmer, who isn't prepared to put in the work and wait his turn for a shot at the top job, would have realised that Corbyn was extremely popular with the membership and that unless he took every opportunity to undermine Corbyn's leadership he could be waiting a very long time to get a chance at the top job. In his mind, the 2015 conference was as good a place to start as any. It allowed him to set out his stall to the entire membership but, in particular, to the PLP and any potential donors.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34397253
2nd January 2016 : Barely 8 months since Starmer became an MP he writes an article for the Observer. He expresses his concerns around how leaving the EU would damage cross-border collaboration and make the UK more vulnerable to criminals and terrorists. He talks about the threat of ‘criminal gangs’ who operate across Europe. He doesn't mention any other concerns he might have about Brexit in this article and chooses, instead, to focus on a solitary and extremely divisive issue. So now, as well as Ukip and the Tories stoking fear of migrants, criminal gangs and terrorists, supposedly heading for the UK, we have Starmer (Labour's Shadow Minister for Immigration), tapping into that rich vein of fear, hate and intolerance, arguing for cross-border collaboration to stave off an imagined influx. So, why does a devout remainer who, presumably, supports freedom of movement, dedicate an entire article pandering to Ukip and Tory voters?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/02/eu-referendum-uk-exit-bad-for-crime-fighting
9th April 2016 : Starmer tells the Guardian's Stephen Moss he thinks that Corbyn could be replaced before the next election. Moss asks whether he might have any leadership ambition, of his own. Starmer skips the question and swiftly moves onto the topic of national security, reminding us that his track record shows he is tough on terrorism. They then, naturally, move onto the topic of immigration and Starmer tells us that, while he agrees that immigration has brought a “richness” to our communities, he also recognises that there are some parts of the country, like “Oldham, where it’s very hard to find a skilled job, and then the Home Office subcontracts asylum-seeking contracts to Serco, who decide to put everybody in one small bit of Oldham because it’s very cheap to do so, you get a different readout.” He then reveals he’s in the middle of a tour, visiting 20 towns all over the UK and aims to produce a report that will be used to establish a new party policy on immigration. It seems that while he's not comfortable answering a direct question about his leadership ambitions, he is eager to deliver a leadership pitch whenever he can. Even Moss admits that this.. “grand tour might also serve another purpose. Wherever he goes he is being shown around by a local Labour MP and addressing party members. It is a good way of making contacts and building a party base if he did want to mount a challenge for the leadership." Worth noting here that Owen Smith would launch his leadership challenge 3 months later, on 13 July 2016.
Given that the above articles were all published within the first 12 months of Starmer being elected as an MP, I think it's fair to say that Aitkenhead had made an astute observation about Starmer having his eye on the prize, but I don't think any of us could have guessed just how ruthlessly ambitious, or impatient, he was to land the top job.
As you know folks, I'm doing a deep dive into Starmer, including his voting history over the last 8yrs. I'm publishing short instalments as I go along but I'll also be producing a complete report on Spotlight Newspaper when I'm done. I've set up a JustGiving page to raise funds to pay for the research so if you appreciate the work I'm doing then please consider sponsoring this project - https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/kidstarverprofilept2
