The local elections are a triumph for Keir Starmer’s embrace of Blairism

In just three years, the Labour leader has driven his party from the trough of failure to the sunlit uplands of the centre ground, writes John Rentoul

All Starmer has to do is hold his nerve and keep the Labour vehicle pointing towards the centre ground (Getty)

The Conservatives have done about as badly in the local elections as you would expect, given that they are 20 points behind Labour in the national opinion polls. Ben Houchen’s win as mayor of Tees Valley is notable not because the Tories are doing better than expected, but because his personal popularity is sufficient to withstand the national anti-Tory tide.

So let us give Keir Starmer the credit that is due for what are, overall, very good results for Labour. The Labour leader has been a lucky general, but we ought to recognise his skill in maximising his good fortune.

The recovery from the trough of Labour losing a seat to the government at the by-election in Hartlepool just three years ago has been extraordinary – symbolised by Labour winning back control of the council there last night.

In those three years, Starmer has taken the Labour Party on a journey: from Jeremy Corbyn to Tony Blair. It was Corbyn who began Labour’s recent habit of losing by-elections to the government. By-elections are a free vote: a chance to protest about life, the universe and everything without consequences. They ought to be bread and butter for oppositions making their case against governments.

Yet Corbyn managed to lose the Copeland by-election in 2017 to Theresa May’s Tory party, and Starmer seemed to be set to continue that dismal record in Hartlepool in 2021. Admittedly, Boris Johnson was in his pomp, enjoying the vaccine bounce and marauding across Labour’s northern heartlands like a Viking. But for the official opposition to lose a seat to the government suggested that Labour had made no progress from its worst defeat in a post-war general election in 2019.

How things have changed since then. Reversing through recent Labour history like a stunt driver, Starmer gradually got the party back to the Ed Miliband years of bland idealism, picking up speed as he and Rachel Reeves drove into the Gordon Brown years: serious about economics, iron-clad in fiscal discipline, but a bit distracted with silly schemes for replacing the House of Lords.

Now we are back in the land of Blair. The kind of swing that Labour secured in the Blackpool South by-election yesterday – 26 per cent – was up there with the swings recorded by New Labour under Blair as the Tory cataclysm of 1997 approached. This year and last, Labour under Starmer has won five by-elections with swings of more than 20 per cent. Blair won only four – although there are more by-elections these days, thanks to the Recall of MPs Act.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives have posted what is possibly their worst set of local election results since the war. The few Labour disappointments, in Tees Valley, Oldham and Harlow – and tomorrow, possibly, in the West Midlands – cannot obscure what was, overall, an outstanding day for Starmer that augurs well for the general election.

The Conservative Party is close to giving up. Even Andrea Jenkyns, one of two publicly declared Tory MPs who want Rishi Sunak gone, hoisted the white flag this morning, saying that the coup is off: “We are working with what we’ve got.”

Tory party members have lost their appetite for permanent revolution. Two-thirds told Conservative Home’s survey that they thought Sunak should stay on, “regardless of the local election results”.

All Starmer has to do is hold his nerve and keep the Labour vehicle pointing towards the centre ground. This may not be where his instinct takes him, which might cause some late hesitations on the road to the new dawn that is likely to break over the country later this year.

But he is steering the car by the satnav of ruthless ambition, which tells him to keep going in a Blairite direction. As John McTernan, Blair’s former political secretary, once said of the “soft left” such as Starmer and Neil Kinnock: “When they meet reality, they move to the centre.” Unlike other so-called left-wing figures, such as Corbyn – who, when they meet reality, deny it.

Hence the evidence this week that Starmer is continuing to ditch any policies that might act as a drag on the Labour vote. Not for him the soft-left equivocation that takes victory for granted and seeks a mandate for “radical” action in government. When Starmer says “no complacency” he means it, just as Blair did.

So Angela Rayner’s new deal on employment rights will be subject to consultation. The “right to switch off” from work will be in the form of guidelines rather than law. Nothing will be allowed into the manifesto that could be portrayed as a threat to jobs.

The message of the local elections and Blackpool South is that Blairism is working. Starmer won’t let Labour complacency ruin it.