Picture this. Keir Starmer is sitting at a kitchen table, staring into the camera, wearing decidedly casual clothes. The mug sitting next to his left hand confirms that the people around him are trying something a bit folksy and faux-intimate. As ever, his usual air of awkwardness shows that he is a newcomer to these rituals; in the midst of constant negative news stories, he also looks weary. “I hope you are having a good start to 2025,” he says. “I wanted to begin the new year by assuring you that for me and my government, the work goes on.”
Here we go, you think: the usual cliches. “Five years ago this month, our country fell into one of its most significant run of events in living memory. On 31 January 2020, we finally left the European Union. Then, less than two months later, the threat from Covid-19 meant the start of all those lockdowns, and a long period of fear, worry and bereavement.” This, it seems, might be a bit better than usual. “In time, we all hoped that in recognition of what we had been through, the unfairnesses and inequalities that Covid had so vividly highlighted, would finally be acted on. There was a lot of talk about ‘levelling up’ and ‘building back better’, from politicians who had no intention of making those promises real – and even worse, reckless economic policies that simply made lives even more difficult. And soon enough, war in Europe and a huge cost of living crisis were adding to our predicament.”
His face brightens. “Last summer, my government was elected, with one defining task: to finally start to repay all that hurt and sacrifice, by beginning to restore the things that people once took for granted, so that lives consist of so much more than struggle after struggle. We’re working towards a fairer, happier, healthier country. The certainty that people can have a dependable home, whether they own or rent it. Security at work, so people are decently paid and well treated. New jobs in green industries. Public transport that actually works; schools that help both our children’s success, and their wellbeing. And an NHS that can once again provide the certainty that an ambulance will arrive in good time, that the GP you see will actually know you, and that if you fall ill, it won’t bring unnecessary fear.”
Then he affects an expression of distaste. “Of course, there are powerful vested interests who don’t like all this. As 2025 begins, you hear it in the protests from the small minority of people who use private education, who we are asking to contribute a bit more towards improving our state schools. The most noise comes from those cynical politicians who try to use division and despair – now with the help of foreign billionaires – to further their ends. What sits at the centre of everything my government does is very different. In the past, I’ve called it ordinary hope. That remains our defining purpose, and our offer to the whole country. Happy new year.”
It is, of course, very easy to come up with scripts that have never been written and blithely urge people in power to up their game. But what you have just read is mostly based on policies the government is actually enacting. Of course, many of us have sizable misgivings about where it seems to be heading, many of them centred on the paralysing grip of Treasury orthodoxy. But there is still a solid social-democratic tale to tell about Starmer and his government – and it could begin to steady ministers’ nerves and connect with the public, if only someone would actually try.
When I hosted the final Guardian Politics Weekly UK podcast of 2024, our political editor, Pippa Crerar, explained to me that in the government’s inner circles, there had recently been a belated realisation. When they first took power, she said, Starmer and his allies firmly believed that the currency of political storytelling had been so debased during the 2016 referendum and everything that followed it – by Boris Johnson, chiefly – that it was best left alone. “They thought the public had had enough of big promises, and it wouldn’t believe them … And they needed to show, rather than tell,” she said. Of late, however, they had realised “that was actually wrong: you need a story, and narrative”. That such a basic mistake was in need of correction is pretty mind-boggling. But there we are: after long months when the resulting vacuum has meant the government constantly fighting off other people’s hostile narratives, this is apparently their new year resolution.
Has it been meaningfully put into practice? At the beginning of last week, Starmer issued a filmed statement to mark the start of 2025, delivered at a weirdly bare desk, next to the obligatory union jack. There was a rather limp reference to England’s dashed hopes at last year’s European Championship and mentions of the looming 80th anniversaries of VE and VJ days, as he drew comparisons with the distant 1940s and now, and promised a “year of change”. His goal, he said, was “security for working people … and we will push it forward in 2025”. It could have been a lot worse. But as ever, there were no moral messages about the government’s values (his aim, he said, is “a nation that gets things done”), or two of the most fundamental features of any story: how we got from the recent past to the present, and a sense of the adversity he is fighting to overcome.
As with most of the political class, he evidently clings to the idea that if he ignores Nigel Farage and Reform UK, they will conveniently go away. In that sense, his words lacked any populist bite – not just failing to even hint who his enemies are, but giving no sign of the will to defeat them, which increasingly seems to be the most basic requirement of 21st-century politics. Worse, there is still precious little narrative glue holding ministers’ actions together. The result: not for the first time, the latest policy blitz – positive changes to the NHS, but an answer our social care disaster once again postponed – looks more like a frantic mess.
Convincing political stories are not just a matter of presentation. Without them, parties and governments lack not just a connection with the public but any solid sense of what they are doing and why, which is one of the reasons the left keeps losing to the right. “Take back control” crystallised a story. So does Donald Trump’s deathless promise to make America great again, and all the righteous battle cries that come with it. If Starmer continues to leave the relevant lessons unlearned, he will join Kamala Harris and the forlorn social democrats of mainland Europe, wondering why plummeting numbers of voters seem to like him, and living out the most grim narrative of all: that without an animating purpose, parties and politicians always flounder on to inevitable defeat.
