Keir Starmer’s stance on Nato is inconsistent with his past

I agreed with everything in the Labour leader’s ‘I love Nato’ thumping of the tub – but it felt oddly unconvincing, writes John Rentoul

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer (PA)

Less than two years ago Keir Starmer was a candidate for the Labour leadership on a party unity ticket that included “No more illegal wars” and a “Prevention of Military Intervention Act”. He promised in effect to give the Corbynites the policies they wanted, presented by a more prime ministerial leader.

Yesterday he wrote an article that struck a different tone. “The likes of the Stop the War coalition are not benign voices for peace,” he declared. Even as a sectarian Blairite myself, I was shocked. I agreed with everything in his “I love Nato” thumping of the tub, including the hero-worship of Clement Attlee, Ernest Bevin and Denis Healey. But as a neutral observer, accustomed now to looking at the Labour Party from the outside as a sociological phenomenon rather than a cause to identify with, it felt oddly unconvincing.

He was asked about that dissonance in an interview at Nato HQ in Brussels with Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC, who asked: “You say now that Labour is the party of Nato. Have you always believed that?” He said “yes” and repeated the line about Bevin, Labour’s post-war foreign secretary, who signed the treaty: “This is Labour Party history and tradition.”