The Starmer Era in British Politics Has Already Begun
The Labour opposition is acting like the government, and Rishi Sunak’s government is acting like the opposition.
Labour’s Keir Starmer is interviewed during a media round this week.
Photographer: Ian Forsyth/Getty Images EuropeThe party conference season confirmed a strange reversal in British politics. The opposition Labour Party is behaving like a ruling party while the ruling Conservative Party is behaving like an opposition—and not just any opposition but one that has just been humiliated by the electorate and doesn’t know where to go.
Labour leader Keir Starmer delivered a stolid speech that was carefully directed at reassuring nervous Conservatives. (The only bit of glitter was provided by a protester.) Rachel Reeves, his shadow chancellor of the exchequer, reassured the TV-watching public that she was a safe pair of hands — and brandished an endorsement from the former head of the Bank of England, Mark Carney. (Carney was recently named chair of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.) The main auditorium was perpetually packed with cheering delegates who gave off a palpable sense that their time had finally come. The suit gap between Labour and the Conservatives, which had opened into a chasm in the Corbyn years, had almost returned to New Labour levels.