No, Mr Gove, Keir Starmer is not a Tory in disguise

Michael Gove used his new role as Spectator editor to suggest his former Tory party colleagues should be ‘gasping in admiration’ at the PM. But joking aside, the Tory fear is he has captured the centre ground which voters favour, warns Andrew Grice

Is Keir Starmer a Tory?”, The Spectator asked this week. Its editor, Michael Gove, gave Starmer “two cheers” for his shift to the right, saying most Tories would be “gasping in admiration” if they could throw off their partisan blinkers.

Gove also joked that the prime minister clearly decided to impress the Conservative-supporting magazine as soon as he became its editor.

However, for some Labour MPs, including ministers, Starmer’s rightward tilt is no joke. They judge correctly that cuts to welfare, overseas aid and bureaucracy and tough rhetoric on immigration are designed to appeal to working-class voters in the red wall tempted by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

I think the rightward lurch has been a little overstated.

True, Starmer is adopting more Tory policies than Tony Blair ever did. Yet Starmer’s government has increased public spending by £70bn, raised taxes by £40bn, enhanced workers’ and renters’ rights, set up state-owned GB Energy, and is taking the railways back into public ownership. That hardly makes him a Tory.

“We are a soft-left government with right-wing rhetoric,” one senior Labour figure told me.

On welfare, Starmer is under fire from the left, who want no cuts, and the right, as the Tories claim he has not gone far enough. He is bang in the middle, in a piece of triangulation Blair would approve of, and probably where most voters are.

To me, Starmer looks like a leader energised and emboldened by his daunting challenges at home and abroad. His handling of Donald Trump and Ukraine has given him more confidence on the domestic front. When he makes the “moral case” to reduce the spiralling welfare bill, it is not a soundbite; he really believes it and wants to ensure young people escape a life on benefits.

The PM once declared: “There is no such thing as Starmerism and there never will be.” He is interested in “what works” rather than left/right labels. Yet Starmerism is now being moulded in the heat of his current battles.

Morgan McSweeney, the architect of Labour’s remarkable election victory and now Starmer’s chief of staff, has persuaded his boss the government needs to act as “insurgents” and “disruptors” to head off the populists’ threat. It was always going to be hard to preserve the wide voter coalition McSweeney assembled last year.

There is now growing tension inside Labour over how to do so, and which voters to prioritise. The debate has been heightened by the £5bn cuts to disability and incapacity benefits and the further cuts to come in Rachel Reeves’s spring statement on Wednesday.

I’m told some Downing Street policy advisers are uneasy about the rightish spin put on their proposals, while some senior civil servants worry the political messaging makes it harder to implement the government’s strategy. They point to a disconnect between hostile rhetoric on immigration and closer EU links and the government’s number one priority to boost economic growth.

Labour’s next internal battle may be over climate change. Some in No 10 want to dilute net zero targets and funding and move Ed Miliband from his post as energy secretary in the next cabinet reshuffle. The chances of such a dilution increased when Kemi Badenoch claimed it is “impossible” to hit the UK’s 2025 net zero target, ending the 40-year cross-party consensus on the issue.

Yet a retreat from the target, and focusing instead on climate adaptation and energy security, would be more expensive than sticking to it. Warning to Starmer: Miliband has the highest favourability rating of any cabinet minister among Labour Party members, according to a new survey. And more members (49 per cent) think Labour is heading in the wrong direction than the right one (40 per cent).

Keeping Miliband in his current job sends a reassuring signal to green voters. McSweeney’s internal critics point to polling by More in Common for UCL’s Policy Lab, which suggests Labour could lose two in five of its 2024 voters to the Liberal Democrats or Greens if it dropped progressive policies – for example, slowing action on climate change.

A 1.5 per cent swing from Labour to the Lib Dems could hand 80 Labour-held seats to the Tories. Starmer’s shift could also stall Labour’s revival in Scotland and its hopes of ousting the SNP from power in next year’s Scottish parliament elections. In contrast, Labour’s “soft populist” appeal to Reform-inclined voters would net fewer votes, the polling suggests.

Playing the “insurgent” and hints of admiration of Trump’s approach to governing risk alienating progressive voters. The only UK voters who want to smash up the state are those already committed to Reform. Labour can’t be blamed for trying to repeat last year’s victory.

But the next election will be different. Last year, people wanted to boot the Tories out; next time, they will pass judgement on Labour so there will surely be less anti-Tory (or anti-Reform) tactical voting. There’s a danger that, in trying to protect its right flank, Labour leaves its left one exposed.