There’s a future world in which I fancy myself an old-style crime boss. I infiltrate the organisation, climb to stand at the leader’s right-hand side and when the moment comes ruthlessly snatch power.
I didn’t used to have such ambitions but then what is Sir Keir Starmer if not an inspiration to us all? Forget your party allegiance. If you want to see victory, whole and unblemished, then model yourself on Keir Starmer versus the Labour Left. It’s hard not be impressed, although it would be more gripping as a drama if the bodies along the way hadn’t been so carefully hidden from public view.
Impressed as I am with Starmer, I therefore felt quite hopeful for the country on July 5th. The Government could be brave, it could afford to risk its popularity in the service of good governance, it could fulfil its technocratic promise.
Two months in, I’m not so sure. In concrete term there isn’t much to go on. A reasonable place to start might be the flagship policy of imposing VAT on private schools fees. Is this going to lead to an increase in the number of people receiving a good education over the course of this parliament? Or will it merely cause financial pain to families at the bottom of the top decile of income earners? What is the aim? It can’t all be envy, electoral signalling and class warfare, can it?
Or maybe it can. This policy is aimed at extracting money from parents who already pay twice for their children’s education, once through their taxes and again in fees to private schools. Shouldn’t the willingness of some families to pay twice for education be enough for a party that wants to lift up the less well-off rather than punish the successful. Today’s Labour Party, however, reveals itself in its actions.
My worry is this tax raid won’t only punish the well-off. When the policy is enacted there will follow a migration of pupils from the private to the state sector. Unless your parents are both train drivers, a 20% increase in fees will be unaffordable. Where will these pupils go? At the good comprehensive school where I work, the only reason we’re not entirely serving the local middle classes is because our admissions policy sets aside a certain number of places for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Before this policy was put in place, the school was following the typical trajectory of successful schools with an inverse relationship between improving results and the number of low-income pupils getting in. Most successful comprehensive schools do not set aside any places for disadvantaged pupils. That will mean the refugees from the private sector will inevitably take places from less privileged children at the best comprehensives. The only way to remedy this would be to create additional places at outstanding state schools, but the Government has no intention of doing that.
Two months in, then, are the tea leaves of early decisions enough to place Starmer in the firmament of the most successful Labour leaders? Only four have won overall majorities since 1906: Attlee, Wilson, Blair and Starmer. But will he make good on this promise? Did Starmer win a huge majority so he can impose VAT on private school fees, take away the winter fuel allowance and pretend that the national electricity grid will soon be carbon neutral? Did Starmer say very little in the election campaign because he actually has very little to say?
After his leadership campaign in 2019, I had Starmer down as a dissembler par excellence and now he has won power I’ve seen nothing to change my mind. He seems to offer more brave words than he does brave actions. He has ruthlessly dealt with his enemies in his party, but to what end? He comes across as a ruthless dissembler with nothing substantial at his political core. At the back of my mind lingers one final question: is Keir Starmer just Boris Johnson but with more hair gel and less testosterone?
The author is a teacher at a London comprehensive.
Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly referred to “the Tories’ tax raid” rather than Labour’s in the headline.
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