The Notebook: Starmer leading like a civil servant isn’t working
And it is leading to dangerous, unwanted and undemocratic policymaking – like the introduction of bank spying powers, writes Silkie Carlo
This weekend marked 100 days of the new Labour government – a period of deliberate doom and gloom rather than honeymoon.
As I wrote in my Notebook for this paper upon his election, Sir Keir Starmer’s victory speeches promising “the return of politics to public service” would always end badly. After securing political leadership of the country, he seemed instead to promise five years of vapid, managerial governance led by ex-civil servants – repeatedly referring to his past role as director of public prosecutions and then installing career civil servant Sue Grey as his chief of staff, the punchiest political role in government.
Whilst we all want politicians acting in the public interest, setting up the public to expect bland impunity rather than political leadership was not only a letdown after years of domestic inertia resulting from coalition and minority governments, Conservative infighting, referenda and a pandemic. It also set him and his colleagues up for failure. They’re politicians, after all. And as night follows day, just weeks later freebie-gate dominated the headlines with things looking very much like the cost of an exclusive pass to Downing Street was a new wardrobe for Starmer and his wife – designer glasses included. Grey didn’t even last the first 100 days.
But the overlooked aspect of this, about which I am far more worried than the doom-mongering, freebies and media mismanagement, is the quality of the new laws we’re now facing as the result of this deference to the civil service. Because, as I also warned in my post-election column, Starmer leading like a civil servant makes him a vassal for the forces around him – and those forces are not simply ‘the public’.
Eye spy
Cue one of Labour’s most extraordinary recent announcements – the return of mass bank spying powers.
The plans to constantly monitor all our bank accounts – which this newspaper reported extensively on, and which were defeated in the last days of the Conservative government – will be revived by Labour in a Fraud, Error and Debt Bill. The targets of this financial snooper’s charter are welfare recipients – including disabled people, cancer sufferers, pensioners, carers and even landlords of housing benefit claimants.
But since banks don’t have databases of benefits recipients, every single one of our bank accounts will be scanned.
It’s hard to imagine a more punitive, poorly-targeted, ineffective, invasive and less ‘Labour’ law – but that’s because it’s not a Labour policy. No one voted for it. It’s a terrible plan drummed up by civil servants in the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Labour government is shockingly, unthinkingly doing their bidding. If that’s the ‘politics of service’, who is it in service to? It’s not the public.
An un-conservative Conservative leadership race
The Conservative Party leadership race is down to the final two candidates – Robert Jenrick and Kemi Badenoch.
Curiously, the wedge issue has become whether the British public should have legally protected rights. That’s because Jenrick wants the UK to join Belarus and Russia by leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and repealing our Human Rights Act – the domestic law that protects the rights, freedoms and liberty we enjoy in this country.
The ECHR is the most important legal legacy of the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, and a cherished part of Churchill’s legacy, who helped create it. How can ripping it up be deemed remotely conservative?
Triumph over evil
Holocaust survivor Lily Ebert died last week aged 100, after a lifetime of educating people about tolerance, humanity and the lessons of our recent human past.
Lily’s survival from unimaginable horror, her commitment to duty, her relentless faith in humanity and perhaps above all, her unstoppable joy are an education in resilience.
In a life of incredible achievements, perhaps her greatest is that she is survived by her beloved 38 great-grandchildren. There are few greater examples of triumph over evil.