Keir Starmer adjusts to life after Boris Johnson as Tories pick leader

Keir Starmer, Britain’s leader of the opposition, has defined himself as the principled, managerial alternative to the chaotic, sometimes rule-breaking, Boris Johnson.

But Johnson’s dramatic resignation last week raises questions over whether Starmer’s unique selling point has disappeared.

Ahead of the prime minister’s departure, Labour had drawn up a dossier of attack lines in preparation for the next election, expected in 2024, pinpointing multiple failures of morality and governance.

They ranged from a scandal over expensive wallpaper at Downing Street to the “partygate” scandal, which saw over 100 fines issued to staff at Number 10 and other departments for breaking rules on social gatherings during the Covid-19 lockdown.

“If Boris had stayed there would have been a very good strategy of attacking him directly. But now we are back to a situation where we can attack the Tories generally and their record over the last 12 years,” said one Starmer adviser.

When asked in the wake of Johnson’s resignation whether his job had just become harder, Starmer responded: “No, not in the slightest.”

In a speech on Monday he accused candidates hoping to replace Johnson as “desperately trying to launder [their party’s] integrity” despite having stood by an “unfit prime minister” to the bitter end. He also accused them for launching an “arms race of fantasy economics” with an estimated tens of billions of pounds of unfunded spending commitments.

“Only Labour can reboot our economy and end the cost of living crisis,” Starmer said.

Johnson dealt the Labour party its biggest election defeat for nearly a century in 2019. A charismatic campaigner, he was able to channel anti-establishment sentiment while tapping into resentment that Brexit was being blocked by Labour, and seized scores of seats in the so called “Red Wall” of former Labour heartlands in northern England and the Midlands.

“He did have something special,” conceded one senior Labour figure.

To the frustration of Labour, Johnson was also able to disassociate himself from the Conservative party’s decade in power, as if the 2016 Brexit referendum represented a political year zero.

“When Johnson talked about [former Tory leader] David Cameron, he talked as if he was unassociated with him” said one Starmer ally.

But without Johnson, Starmer believes it will be easier to attack the record of successive Tory governments since 2010 and focus on his programme for economic growth, pledging to make Brexit work and promising to invest £28bn a year to tackle the climate crisis.

Labour’s lead over the Tories has widened from 4 points to 9 points over the past month — although opposition parties often have bigger poll leads midway through a Parliament — and Starmer is bullish after being cleared by Durham Police breaching Covid restrictions in April 2021 (he had pledged to resign if found guilty).

However, many polls show that the Labour leader has yet to convince voters that he could lead the country. Many have only a vague sense of what he stands for and what he would do as a Labour prime minister.

Although some voters in southern England appear to have deserted Johnson’s Tory party, with three recent by-elections lost to the Liberal Democrats, some former Labour supporters in the “Red Wall” have stayed loyal to the prime minister despite the slew of recent scandals.

“In some pro-Brexit Red Wall seats like Hartlepool, he [Johnson] may still have been a stronger asset to his party than any challengers,” said one Labour figure.

James Frith, former Labour MP for Bury North who is hoping to stand again in the next general election, said that while there was a growing feeling among voters that Johnson had “served his purpose” in delivering Brexit, now that he was gone there would be renewed pressure on Labour to offer up its own vision for the future.

“Where his departure probably does turn up our volume and help us get heard, it also increases the expectation that we need to outline our vision for Bury and Britain,” said Frith. “With those expectations comes greater threat.”

How Labour goes on the offensive over the next two years will depend on who seizes the crown from Johnson, and party strategists hope that some of the sense of “sleaze” from the Johnson years will linger to tarnish his successor.

“We need a fresh start . . . we won’t get that from a Conservative party infected with the chaos virus caught from Boris Johnson,” Starmer said.