Only Keir Starmer makes governing look impossible
I have spent much of my life explaining that governing is hard. But it is not as hard as this. It is an extraordinary failure by Sir Keir Starmer that, even armed with a huge majority in parliament, he has made governing the UK look almost impossible.
His discovery, in Monday’s speech, that “incremental change won’t cut it” — a point that has been entirely obvious for many months — is unlikely to save him after two years of mismanagement and drift. The pledge to get much closer to the EU in future risks making the idea unpopular, because it comes from a desperate prime minister on his last legs, rather than looking like a convincing strategy.
After last week’s election results, it is tempting to think that the game is up for major centre-left parties; losing seats in all directions to left and right while having no clear governing philosophy. Yet Angela Rayner was right when she pointed out on Sunday that such governments in other countries are enjoying success, mentioning Canada as an example. The trouble for her, and others in the Labour Party who think that moving to the left is the solution, is that the lesson from popular centre-left governments abroad is the very opposite of the one she draws.
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While no two countries have identical politics, Canada and Australia have political systems closely comparable to our own. They are indeed descended from it. As it happens, both are currently governed by their main centre-left party, the Liberals in Canada under Mark Carney and the Australian Labor Party led by Anthony Albanese. They face many similar challenges to those of Starmer: global shocks, the US going rogue, slowing growth, insurgent parties and the need to set a clear direction in uncertain times. Yet their electoral performance and popularity is at the other end of the scale from their friends in British Labour. Could it be that they are doing something from which Labour might wish to learn?
The Liberals in Canada have been in power for more than a decade but Carney has recently revitalised them. In recent weeks his party swept to victory in three by-elections. Securing a string of defections from the Conservative opposition, he has secured a Commons majority. His personal approval rating stands at 54 per cent. In Australia, Albanese won re-election with a record majority in a general election last year and even after four years in office remains well ahead of the opposition in the polls.
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How, an embattled British minister might well ask, can this possibly be true? Surely governing is impossibly difficult, and dealing with Trump is exhausting? Voters are going to the extremes, the minister would complain, and it’s so hard trying to please even some of the people some of the time, let alone most of them all of the time.
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Well, not in Canada and Australia, it isn’t. Governing turns out to be difficult but not impossible. Before plunging into choosing another leader without knowing where that will lead, it is time to study what is happening in such countries.
As with any prime minister who survives more than a few years, Carney and Albanese are competent chief executives. They do not cycle through endless cabinet secretaries, appoint ambassadors who resign in predictable scandals or fire senior civil servants to save their own skins. They are both able to make the machinery of government — very similar in both cases to our own — respond to their wishes. These are basic requirements for national leaders. But crucially, they have also made a clear political and philosophical choice, to govern much more from the centre than from the left.
Both Carney and Albanese have pursued policies on tax, energy, migration and defence that are very different from the ideas of Angela Rayner, Andy Burnham or Ed Miliband.
In Canada, Carney has cancelled a scheduled increase in capital gains tax to “incentivise builders, innovators and entrepreneurs to grow their businesses in Canada”. The Labor government in Australia has focused reductions in income tax rates on middle earners and increased most tax thresholds to improve incentives. These approaches are in sharp contrast to the Labour government here, which is seeing many wealthy people leave the country for tax reasons and middle-income workers facing frozen thresholds and high marginal tax rates.
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On energy, both Carney and Albanese have shocked some supporters by maintaining fossil fuel production, to ensure stable supplies, alongside boosting renewables. Albanese has extended the life of Australia’s North West Shelf gas field for another 40 years. Carney has pledged to double Canada’s liquefied natural gas production. Whether these policies are right or wrong, they are the exact opposite of the determination of the British government not to allow new production from the North Sea.
Carney has toughened Canadian immigration policy, already halving the targets for new residents set by his predecessor, Justin Trudeau. Australia’s Labor home affairs minister has warned that “Progressive governments need to be strong on borders” if they are to be electorally successful — “if someone has no right to be in your country, they should leave”. Labour members here who want to water down Shabana Mahmood’s new policies should take note.
Both of these countries are already implementing, not just promising, sharp increases in defence spending. The Labor government in Australia has just published an integrated investment programme alongside its defence strategy, the very thing that Starmer has been unable to produce for almost a year now. It plans to raise defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2033.
Canada is allocating tens of billions of dollars to defend the Arctic as part of Carney’s commitment to reach 3.5 per cent of GDP for defence by 2035. His approach also embraces a defence industrial strategy steering the bulk of the increase to Canadian companies.
These two prime ministers, Carney and Albanese, are not perfect and face many domestic political controversies. Their administrations will not last for ever. But they are showing how to govern as leaders of centre-left parties. They have not needed to suffer huge electoral losses to realise that small changes are insufficient. They understand that stronger defences are urgent, that national resilience needs diversified energy supplies and that economic growth requires incentives to work hard and to invest in their countries. They understand that most of the electorate is willing to support decisive, competent government from close to the centre of the political spectrum, and they know that is the only way to see off the extremes.
All of that could apply in Britain. As Labour struggles to oust Starmer, it is in danger of thinking that his drifting needs to be replaced with a move to the left. That would only accelerate national decline and their electoral annihilation. They should lift their eyes, look across the oceans and learn from leaders who lead their parties, govern from the centre and are rewarded at the polls.