Starmer’s cold-eyed realism sets a path for Labour’s future.
The PM’s success in Washington and sacrifice of overseas aid for defence shows an acceptance that the progressive hegemony is over
Jason Cowley
Sunday March 02 2025, 12.01am GMT, The Sunday Times
Sir Keir Starmer returned from his meeting with Donald Trump in Washington on Friday morning convinced that he had enjoyed the best week of his premiership. He had good reason to be satisfied, and not just because he safely delivered a letter from the King. Starmer’s government has lacked purpose and definition. It is unpopular in the country. Rachel Reeves’s tax-raising budget alienated the business community, and the economy is stagnant.
Starmer himself has been caricatured as a north London progressive, a “Corbynista in an Islington suit” (© Boris Johnson), a liberal human rights lawyer by training and instinct but not a natural politician. He is or has been all these things, but he is something else as well. What he has demonstrated in recent days is that he is a cold-eyed realist, a necessary condition for a British prime minister whose country is menaced by hostile foreign powers and internally divided.
We knew Starmer was ruthless and motivated by personal ambition. But was he prepared to take big risks in the national interest, demonstrate Britain’s commitment to defence and hard power and, therefore, help shape the new cultural and political realities of our age? Or would Labour under his leadership continue to flounder like so many other centre-left governments in the West, most recently Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, who were abjectly defeated in the German federal elections? Times.
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