Is Keir Starmer the man to dig Britain out of this new age of insecurity?
In a bid to win over the British public, the Labour party is now telling a new story about how they will rescue voters from the age of insecurity and usher in the new age of hope, Josh Williams writes
To convince the country that they want change of a Labour flavour, the party is now telling a new story, clearly evident at its conference this week. Yesterday, Keir Starmer told a packed hall that a government led by him would “rebuild what was broken”. Both Starmer and his shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves grounded their speeches this week in a new nightmare: “the age of insecurity”. In a report published today – From Security Comes Hope – Labour Together has set out the two sides of that story. It starts with the nightmare, and for many life in Britain today is nightmarish. In the report, we call this the “age of insecurity”.
Successful political projects are defined by the story they tell about the country, as much as by the policies they enact.
In an excellent recent book, The Death of Consensus, Phil Tinline notes that these shifts tend to be animated by a “nightmare” in the immediately preceding period. The fear of mass unemployment inspired Clement Attlee’s post-war welfare state. The fear of hyperinflation and industrial dispute inspired Thatcher’s signature economic policies: unleashing business and reining in the unions. Tony Blair drew on the fear of failing public services to win support for a “third way” that would unite free market capitalism with a progressive and redistributive state.
It is now political commonplace that the British public are ready for change, but are not yet convinced that it is Labour that they wish to turn to – and the polls support that. The first of these conditions is by far the most important to determine electoral success. As the old adage has it: governments lose elections, oppositions do not win them. However, lasting political projects tend to draw on both a desire to ditch the incumbent and to embrace their opponent.
To convince the country that they want change of a Labour flavour, the party is now telling a new story, clearly evident at its conference this week. Yesterday, Keir Starmer told a packed hall that a government led by him would “rebuild what was broken”. Both Starmer and his shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves grounded their speeches this week in a new nightmare: “the age of insecurity”. In a report published today – From Security Comes Hope – Labour Together has set out the two sides of that story. It starts with the nightmare, and for many life in Britain today is nightmarish. In the report, we call this the “age of insecurity”.
Insecurity is experienced by almost every voter in Britain’s electorate, in one form or another. To vast numbers, it is financial: the anxiety induced by soaring bills, rising prices and flat wages. For many, it is felt in their community, the result of failing local public services or crime that goes unpunished. For others, it is national. For those on the left of the political divide, that often manifests in fear of climate change. For those on the right, it is the image of small boats arriving on Britain’s shores. All told, just 16 per cent of Britons feel that their lives have become more secure in recent years. Only one-in-ten think the country has.
But if insecurity is the nightmare, is security enough to excite the electorate? To those of us who live comfortable lives, personally untouched by the depths of insecurity that most Britons feel, it is easy to say it is not. Security, it is often argued, is not ‘hopeful’ enough.
Our paper, as its title suggests, says otherwise. Security is in fact an idea with two meanings. On the one hand, that meaning might be described as “negative”: security is the absence of the pain of insecurity. But, security has a positive meaning too. It is not just our freedom from insecurity; it is our freedom to pursue the things in life that are only possible when we are not beset by worry.
When we asked voters why security mattered to them, their answers ranged widely. Yes, they wanted to be free from the fear and worry of their everyday lives. But they also sought security because it gave them the space to do the good things in life too.
Security is the foundation that gives us the freedom to take risks in life, like leaving one job to pursue another. It is also the freedom to do the little things in life, and pursue our more ordinary hopes. As one voter in Workington memorably recently put it to me, he just wanted enough money left over for “a pint in the pub at the end of the week”.
Successful political projects need stories. To genuinely change the country, they must do more than that too, of course. Our recent politics has been long on stories and short on the policies that deliver them. ‘Take Back Control’ and ‘Levelling Up’ never proved more than fiction. A housebuilding pledge from Keir Starmer from the conference stage yesterday could tackle insecurity in the housing market. Proposed planning reforms from the Shadow Chancellor could unleash private investment that is the necessary condition of good jobs.
The story is emerging, and the policies are too. This might not be a political project in its entirety yet, but it is taking shape.
Josh Williams is deputy director of Labour Together