Starmer’s good PMQs shows politics of Corbyn, Abbott and posh boy revolution left behind

On Tuesday, the Guardian kindly asked me to write a piece online about how Labour should be handling the current crisis, and then asked me to update it for today’s paper, to take into account Keir Starmer’s excellent Prime Minister’s Questions debut.

I can have no complaint about how the piece was presented this morning, a full page, headlined: “With so many deaths, Labour should show no mercy,” a big picture of Starmer at the Despatch Box, and a sub-head that read: “In his PMQs debut, Keir Starmer spoke for the dead, the dying and those on the frontline.”

There were however two paragraphs edited out of my original, both online and in the paper, which I think should see the light of day. I hope they were cut for reasons of length not politics, as the Guardian hopefully reflects on how it became far too caught up in Corbynism, and the posh boy hard left politics pursued by the former leader’s press advisor Seumas Milne, formerly of that newspaper.

The paragraphs in question were these.

“It has been a relief to have as Labour leader someone most reasonable people can at least imagine in government. All but the true believers know this was rarely the case with Jeremy Corbyn.”

“Yesterday, former frontbencher Diane Abbott reminded us of the politics Starmer leaves behind; her response to a serious piece of work by Tony Blair, on lockdown exit strategy, was an attack on the BBC’s Nick Robinson for not giving Labour’s last election-winning leader a harder time.”

I discussed the Blair proposal on the Jeremy Vine show yesterday with Dawn Neesom, editor of the Daily Star, who went off on one about how Blair was the last person anyone wanted to hear from, and then asked the burning question: “I wonder how much he was paid to write it?”

I was able to assure her that not only was he not paid for it, but that he funded it, and indeed that his institute is working with a number of governments in some of the poorest parts of the world right now, to help deal with the crisis. These include the same people who, when the Ebola outbreak first struck, stayed put and helped to confront it.

It is one thing for a tabloid editor not to bother having a serious discussion about a serious piece of work which, unlike her, I had bothered to read, knowing as we had done for two days that it would be discussed. For those of you who can manage more than a Daily Star page lead, you can read it here.

But it is another thing for someone who until recently was in line to become Home Secretary — a serious position, no matter how hard Priti Patel tries to make it look otherwise — to decide that because of the author (the only man alive to have led Labour to an election victory I might add) it was not worth considering.

Here was her full response: “Not only was @bbcr4Today helping Tony Blair to promote his Institute this morning, but Nick Robinson notably polite. There were no ‘gotcha’ questions, no interruptions. You couldn’t pay for PR like that.”

This is so revealing on so many levels. Of all the things on which publicly to express an opinion, she chose that. She could have spoken about testing, tracing, PPE, small businesses, Brits abroad, the health inequalities being exposed, the disproportionate number of BAME people dying from coronavirus. She may well have done so, elsewhere, but the above was the only comment she made that got any kind of traction.

Also, she was not merely saying she had not read what he was proposing (or else she might have said something about the proposal.) She was saying he should have been given a harder time by the interviewer. Presumably, like many of my twitter trolls who lie awake at night wishing I would block them and so make them feel important, she felt this was the time Robinson should be asking Blair about whether he prayed with George Bush, whether he really wanted that second UN Resolution seventeen years ago… anything that allowed the “what about Iraq” tic to be tickled into action.

Her tweet also showed that she, in common with many of the Corbyn true believers, think Jeremy was uniquely the victim of a hostile media. Did she read newspapers when Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock, who had it far worse, were around? Has she ever read my diaries — stupid question, I know — which have pages devoted to the viciousness and venality of the media against, variously, Tony, Gordon Brown, John Prescott, me, Peter Mandelson, Robin Cook, Jack Straw, our children, our parents, our friends… this idea that a horrible press for Labour started with Jeremy Corbyn — per-lease!

And what was so refreshing about PMQs was that yes, you sensed that kind of politics was being left behind by Starmer. He seems to understand that while any Labour leader must work to keep the party united, his real audience must always be the public. He seems to realise too that studying detail really matters too. I wouldn’t even be surprised if he read long papers written by former Prime Ministers, because he thinks he might find things in there that are both interesting, and useful to him in his work.

Because of the damage done to Labour in recent years by the Corbyn/Abbott/Milne approach, Starmer knows he has a long way to go. But he has started well, and leaving behind the politics revealed in Abbott’s silly tweet is a hugely important part of his journey.