Reader TTS

Has Sir Keir Starmer mislaid his conscience? Is winning the next general election so all-consuming that the Labour leader’s head invariably rules his heart?

Starmer was recently asked by LBC radio’s astute interviewer Nick Ferrari if “a siege — cutting off power, cutting off water ” to Gaza was a proportionate response to the massacre by Hamas

on October 7.

Innocent civilians in Gaza are dying in their thousands. Basic necessities – food, water, fuel, medicines – are in critically short supply. A siege may be a death sentence, especially for

the young, the elderly and the vulnerable.

“Yes,” Starmer said diffidently: Israel did have the right to defend itself. You could see the cogs turning. Having banished the spectre of anti-Semitism from his party, he wasn’t about to

offer a hostage to fortune during the last party conference before a general election.

I don’t believe for a moment that Starmer meant to condone the killing of Palestinian civilians. He made a split-second political calculation live on air, not out of conviction, but

expediency.

But he badly misjudged the depth of feeling in the party at the plight of ordinary Gazans — especially among British Muslims. Labour’s metro-mayors Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham, both running

cities with large Muslim populations, broke ranks and called for a ceasefire. So did the leader of the Scottish Labour party, Anas Sarwar, who (like his SNP rival, the Scottish First

Minister Humza Yousaf, has family in Gaza.

Starmer will come back from this. Labour remains a staunch supporter of a two-state solution and a fair deal for Palestinians. A formula will be found to keep the party together. It has come

too far to falter over a loose phrase.

But the question keeps popping up: What is Starmer in politics for? Is this ex-human rights lawyer a champion of the underdog, the marginalised, the dispossessed? Is he a fighter for social

justice? Or is he another company man — a technocrat — who plays the odds?

Starmer famously helped two penniless Greenpeace activists beat back a defamation lawsuit by fast-food giant McDonald’s in the 1990s, in a landmark case upholding free speech. The so-called

McLibel Two had distributed a handful of leaflets outside a couple of McOutlets titled “What’s wrong with McDonald’s.”

The multinational sued for defamation in the UK courts and won. Leave to appeal to the House of Lords was refused, so they took the case to the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR) — with

Starmer’s help. The EHCR found that the two had been denied a fair trial because they were refused legal aid.

The case rewrote the rules. Big corporations trying to silence critics by threatening to bankrupt them through a legal system heavily skewed in their favour were no longer immune.

I do not wish to trivialise the suffering of the people of Gaza or Israel by drawing reductionist analogies. But suffering, to the sufferer, is by definition, relative. Fairness and justice,

however, less so. These are the impulses that bind progressive parties together and should be the core aim of any such party seeking power.

Which poses the question: why is Starmer not raising Cain about the victims of injustice in his own backyard? It’s not as if there is a shortage of injustice or of underdogs.

What better definition of an underdog than the hundreds of sub-postmasters falsely convicted of fraud — harassed, bankrupted and in some cases driven to suicide because of a faulty computer

system?

The Post Office scandal is, by a country mile, the most shameful miscarriage of justice in British legal history. Why is Starmer’s team not all over it?

Then there is the Grenfell Tower tragedy. How many are waiting to be rehoused or receive compensation? And Windrush? How many have died without restitution?

HS2: a first-class piece of investigative reporting by The Times details how highly paid HS2 executives, according to whistle blowers, covered up cost overruns in the billions, while entire

communities in its path were bulldozed into oblivion. This is a perfect hunting ground for a party led by a former Director of Public Prosecutions.

Then there’s the great Covid disaster: unscrupulous private companies, fast-tracked by friendly politicians, trousered millions of taxpayers’ money in return for providing Personal

Protective Equipment (PPE) which all-too-often didn’t work. To her credit, the Shadow Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, has said she will go after the fraudsters.

Power attracts power. Political parties that succumb to corporate lobbying are old news. Starmer is on the threshold of power, so the corporate sector is shovelling money at Labour. The

business world flocked to the Labour conference in Liverpool.

Starmer’s argument for never deviating from the centre, leaving as little room as possible for the Tories to portray him as soft, is utilitarian, simple and compelling.

Without winning power, change is impossible. It means reshaping Labour by dragging the party onto the centre ground and erasing Jeremy Corbyn’s legacy by being seen as business-friendly.  It

means not saying anything that could remotely be interpreted as anti-Semitic (or in time of war anti-Israeli) is therefore essential.

That’s a perfectly logical position. Labour’s love of martyrdom over power is largely why progressive politics in Britain has moved in fits and starts since World War II.

But the impulses that drive the centre-left are surely universal: fairness and a level playing field. What ties a Palestinian, just like his Israeli neighbour, to a sub-postmaster in

Hertfordshire whose life has literally been destroyed, or a victim of the Grenfell fire or of the injustice of Windrush scandal, is a desire for justice and equal treatment.

Faith in politics and its ability to deliver a better future for more than a tiny minority of the rich and the powerful is at rock bottom. Politics has become a clash of identities fuelled

by politicians – like Victor Orban — who see an advantage in labelling their opponents as “other”. But, from the refugee camps of the Middle East (or Myanmar or Venezuela) to the sink

estates of Middlesborough, hope of a square deal (and in some cases a square meal) is fading.

Starmer’s refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza springs perhaps from a desire to be seen as grown-up on the world stage. Or perhaps he wishes to march in lock-step with the United States

in anticipation of his first visit to the White House as the next British Prime Minister.

But there is more to leadership than being a grown-up. There is that little voice inside us that we call principle or, if you prefer, conscience. Starmer needs to locate his principles and

his conscience before he becomes indistinguishable from the party he seeks to replace.

By proceeding, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and our Privacy Policy.

If an account exists for this email address, you will shortly receive an email from us. You will then need to:

Please note, this link will only be valid for 24 hours. If you do not receive our email, please check your Junk Mail folder and add [email protected] to your safe list.