Keir Starmer's promises

Politicians, or rather their "campaign shamans", believe that all the modern public can really digest is a short list of policy points, said The Times. In 1997, Tony Blair had five punchy Labour pledges printed on a card. Less successfully, in 2015, Ed Miliband carved all his policies on a megalith, the "Ed Stone". 

With the next election in the offing, Keir Starmer unveiled the six "first steps" that Labour would take in power in Essex last week. Starmer exuded purpose, in rolled-up shirtsleeves: this was "meant to be a big moment". But the pledges were vague, and hard figures were disappointingly few. 

The six steps were: "Deliver economic stability", by sticking to "tough spending rules"; "Cut NHS waiting times" with 40,000 more evening and weekend appointments each week; "Launch a new Border Security Command", to stop illegal migration; "Set up Great British Energy", a publicly owned clean power company; "Crack down on antisocial behaviour"; and "Recruit 6,500 new teachers" in key subjects.

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'Woefully inadequate'

"The strange thing about Keir Starmer's policy ideas is that they tend to evaporate as the years go on," said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. He ran for the Labour leadership with "clear, radical pledges": abolish the House of Lords, end university tuition fees, nationalise energy and water. "Over time, such promises were downgraded, then dropped." 

With his six steps, "it seemed his policy vanishing act was complete". Growing the economy is "about as low an economic ambition as you can imagine". "Tough spending rules" could mean anything; there was no tax pledge at all. Even those policies that had figures attached were underwhelming. If 6,500 new teachers were recruited tomorrow, it would raise the headcount by 1.4%. 

The pledges are "woefully inadequate to meet the problems we face", said Andrew Fisher in The i Paper. The UK has been through the worst cost-of-living crisis on record. Child poverty and homelessness are soaring. Most of the problems in the public sector are due to staffing shortages, usually related to pay; there is nothing at all about this. 

People know that when things are in a mess, "you need significant change, not modest tinkering".

On the right path?

You have to remember, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer, that the motto of many successful Tory campaigns is: "who scares wins". Time and again, the Conservatives "have persuaded voters that Labour is just too risky to be trusted". 

Last week, the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, tried to paint Labour as "a tax-raising menace". But Starmer has made "de-risking" Labour central to his project. It works: focus groups "often have rude things to say about" him, but "scary is rarely one of them". 

He takes the view that the public is "too cynical and mistrustful of politicians to buy into grandiose claims"; hence the modest pledges, which he can be sure to deliver. With an election coming in July, and polls putting Labour 20 points ahead of the Tories, it’s hard to see that his strategy is wrong.