Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair. The differences are not all obvious

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Good morning. Here’s a sentence that you can safely use if you can’t think of anything profound to say about British politics: Keir Starmer is no Tony Blair.

Nonetheless, some of the most important reasons for this are neglected. One of them is that the political and intellectual positions of their party are very different. I went to the launch of a fascinating new history of New Labour’s early years yesterday. In addition to being a great piece of archival work, it has some interesting things to think about for all of us in the UK today. Some thoughts on that below.

Future imperfect

Last night I went to the launch of the new book Futures of Socialism by Colm Murphy, lecturer in British politics at Queen Mary, University of London and deputy director of the Mile End Institute. It’s a rich history of the emergence of New Labour starting in 1973 and ending in 1997.

Through his extensive use of archival material, Murphy makes a compelling argument: that the popular account of the rise of New Labour, in which thanks to Tony Blair the party accommodated itself to Thatcherism, is simplistic. In Murphy’s telling, the emergence of New Labour is a much more complex and much more intellectual endeavour than that. (Sadly it is an academic monograph, so while it has plenty to recommend for a lay reader, it comes at a hefty price. Ask your local librarian to get a copy and/or write peevish letters to Cambridge University Press until they bring out a reasonably priced paperback.)

Murphy wisely avoids drawing too many contemporary parallels but reading the book it was obvious to me that there is an unflattering one to be drawn between the intellectual foment of Labour’s last prolonged stint in opposition from 1979 to 1997 and, well, what Labour has now.

Part of that, as I wrote in my column recently, is also a reflection on the Conservative government. Labour’s debate over “modernisation” in the 1980s and 1990s was shaped in part by the policy successes of Margaret Thatcher and John Major. Blair benefited from what, in economic terms, must be the most benign inheritance ever bestowed upon an incoming government when he routed Major in 1997.

One reason why the Labour party has a somewhat woolly debate about the future — big picture missions and objectives, yes, but not anything comparable with what went on during the span of Murphy’s book — is that it does not have anything like that inheritance now. (If you haven’t yet, do give Chris Giles’ brilliant but bleak account of what Labour would inherit should it win the next election a read.)

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One way that politicians are just like you and me is that if they are worrying about an uncomfortable truth they often just choose to ignore it. One such difficult truth is Brexit. The last Labour government’s economic model suffered a pretty major blow in the global financial crisis, and then Brexit and the loss of our single market membership finished it off.

Added to that, the global economy is heading towards a new era of protectionism. (You have to call it “de-risking” or “friendshoring” these days. It’s political correctness gone mad.)

During the Liberal Democrat conference in 2019, Guy Verhofstadt, the then Brexit co-ordinator for the EU Parliament, told the hall that the world of tomorrow was “a world of empires”, and given the choice between the American, Chinese and EU empires the UK should choose the EU. His speech was not, I think, a wise one politically speaking. But in policy terms, everything in global politics since then has confirmed the essential truth of his argument. (That said, as Gideon Rachman’s smart column this week reminds me, the European “empire” is some way away from having the ability to defend itself or to act with genuine strategic autonomy.)

As Janan Ganesh notes today, many in Labour are putting a lot of faith in the idea that its climate spending will help it unlock growth and prosperity, and much of the intellectual energy around the Starmer project is blowing from the US and Joe Biden’s administration. But the US is in fact an empire, at least under the Verhofstadt definition. The UK isn’t one and the difficulties of being outside of the nearest thing its immediate neighbourhood has to one still haven’t gone away.

Now try this

I saw Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. I love a corporate, crowd-pleasing blockbuster but this was too much for me: a film that managed to spend an eye-watering amount of money while still giving off an overwhelming smell of “will this do?” Danny Leigh had a rather better impression of it, though: read his review here, and his selection of the six best films of the year so far here.

Top stories today

• High stakes | A meeting between the Pensions Regulator and the £90bn Universities Superannuation Scheme, which is one of the largest investors in Thames Water with a 20 per cent stake, will happen as early as this week, according to people familiar with the situation.

• Councils urge Khan to reverse pollution charge expansion | Mayor Sadiq Khan’s controversial plan to expand London’s clean air zone should be blocked, in part because of a flawed and “unintelligible” consultation process, the UK’s High Court heard yesterday.

• Government’s ‘bloody mindedness . . . gets in the way’ | A demand by junior doctors for a pay rise of about 35 per cent is “not set in stone”, according to the head of the British Medical Association, signalling a possible compromise with the government in the union’s long-running wage dispute.

• Inflation ‘more persistent’ than expected | The prime minister admitted the Bank of England’s task of cutting inflation had been complicated by the higher proportion of people on fixed-rate mortgages, as he pledged to bear down on public borrowing and to take a “responsible” approach to public sector pay.

• Sunak accused of betraying populations vulnerable to global heating | The government is drawing up plans to drop the UK’s flagship £11.6bn climate and nature funding pledge, according to a leaked briefing note to ministers, given to the Foreign Office and seen by the Guardian’s Helena Horton and Patrick Greenfield. The Foreign Office said the government remains committed to delivering the pledge.