Keir Starmers, empty promise of British renewal | Elections

Recent British prime ministers have regularly been caught in the reality trap. David Cameron did not see Brexit coming. Theresa May underestimated the appeal of Corbynism. Boris Johnson couldn't handle COVID. Liz Truss was removed from office by the financial markets. By calling a snap general election on July 4, which he is certain to lose, Rishi Sunak has discovered that his political gifts are not as extensive as he thought. So what awaits Sir Keir Starmer, the man destined to become the next occupant of Number 10 Downing Street?

The Labor leader has carefully positioned himself as a moderating force in British politics; a stable, centrist alternative to 14 years of conservative chaos in power. For this, he was rewarded with a 20-point lead in the polls and the prospect of a crushing rout of Conservative seats this summer. A poll, published in early June, even indicated that he could win the largest majority in Westminster of any British politician since Stanley. Baldwin in 1924. But eliminating Sunak's desperate and beleaguered right-wing government will be the easy part. In fact, I was recently running Britain as a country characterized by the Financial Times, because poor people with rich people's pockets will have a much harder time. Starmer doesn't even seem up to the task.

Labour's economic policy, the centerpiece of that opaque set of ideas collectively known as Starmerism, is a good example. In a speech to the City of London in March, the party's shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, laid out what she sees as the main drivers of Britain's decline: lower productivity in the G7, a lack of strategic investment and long-term regional neglect. Reeves then hinted at a solution: a new strategic partnership between the state and the private sector, reform of the UK's restrictive planning laws and a national wealth fund to help channel cash into areas industrially disadvantaged.

Yet in the same speech, Reeves failed to acknowledge the central role played by the City of London itself in amplifying the UK's abnormally high rates of regional inequality. Instead, she praised the British capital's leading professional and financial services, stopping only to acknowledge the damage the banking sector can cause to national economies when under-regulated. The omission was telling. For decades, the City has acted as a vortex for domestic British investment, draining wealth from the country's peripheries, northern England, central Scotland and south Wales, and redirecting it to the English south-east, rich in assets. Or, just as often, out of the UK and into offshore tax havens.

Naturally, the social effects of this system have been devastating. According to consultancy EY, booming London and its surrounding regions will account for 40% of the UK's economic growth by 2027. The rest of Britain, meanwhile, will continue on its path to the stagnation of the conservatives. Under the Conservatives, spending cuts have hit poor northern cities twice as hard as prosperous southern ones, amplifying health inequalities and pushing local services to their limits. As the party has made clear, Labor could ease these cuts, but it will not reverse them in the next parliament, with fiscal discipline taking priority over social democratic largesse. As if to underline this point, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the UK's spending watchdog,estimates that, in the absence of substantial tax rises, savings of up to $16 billion ($20 billion) will be needed to eliminate Britain's deficit in the coming years, whoever takes power The 4th of July. Balance is one of the Labor Party's economic goals. We will not give up on strict fiscal rules, six-year-old Reeves, an economist at the Bank of England, warned in March.

On this point at least, Starmer has been true to his word. In February, Labor abandoned its flagship pledge to spend 28 billion a year on a green investment plan. Instead, Starmer revealed a more modest commitment: 5 billion a year, by 2028/29, to decarbonise the UK economy. Environmental groups condemned the reversal. Labor has buckled like a house of cards in the wind under pressure from the climate-denying right, said Areeba Hamid of Greenpeace. But change was inevitable. Starmer, worried about Labour's weak support, wants to limit the space reserved for the Conservatives' lines of attack. At the same time, four years after replacing Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labor Party, he remains determined to erase all traces of Corbyn's influence within his party.

Starmer’s assault on the Labor left has produced a bonfire of progressive policies. His initial promises to scrap university tuition fees, raise taxes on top earners, nationalize Britain's price-gouging energy companies and end the gradual privatization of the NHS have all been abandoned or watered down. So is his promise to abolish the House of Lords, the largest unelected legislative chamber in the Western world.

Speaking to the Guardian in 2022, Starmer was adamant that dissolving the Lords, an institution filled with Tory stooges and donors, would restore confidence in the British state. People have lost confidence in politicians' ability to make change, he said. In addition to fixing our economy, we need to fix our politics. However, by the middle of last year, repairing Britain's broken political model had slipped down Starmer's agenda. Constitutional [reform] It takes time and drains energy, Thangam Debbonaire, a senior Starmer ally, told the i newspaper in June 2023. We have a lot to do to fix a country where nothing is working, from getting a passport to pothole repair.

Starmer and his team are right that the Tories have left Britain in a disaster. From Cameron's austerity cuts to market-scaring budget experiments, the UK is poorer, weaker andmore divided today than fifteen years ago. And yet, despite abandoning virtually every policy that could solve Britain's problems, Starmer actually became more, not less, grandiose as the race for Number 10 progressed. It is time to turn the page on the decline of the Conservatives and embrace a decade of national renewal with the Labor Party, he has repeatedly said since Sunak launched the campaign in May. Such rhetoric is not new. In 1997, Tony Blair, celebrating his historic election victory against the Conservatives, asked and answered his own question: A new dawn has broken, hasn't it? And it's wonderful.

But it wasn't wonderful. By the time Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, resigned in 2010, ushering in the final period of Conservative rule, New Labor had become synonymous with three things: Iraq, corruption and financial collapse. The UK did not prosper during the Blair-Brown era, it fractured, restarting the cycle of national catastrophe. Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, is a far less ambitious figure than Blair and shares none of Blair's disruptive vision. He promised a great British renaissance but has no plans to deliver one. Reality awaits the next Labor government. Decline is the British reality.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.