If Sir Keir Starmer fails as Leader of the Opposition, is Jon Ashworth waiting in the wings?
l to r Angela Rayner, Jonathan Ashworth, Sir Keir Starmer, Emily Thornberry, 2017 (PA)
The statement that the job of Leader of Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition is the hardest in British politics is most frequently used as an excuse when the incumbent is not up to the job. Certainly that excuse has been widely used in the last year about Sir Keir Starmer. Other excuses have been that the lockdown has prevented Starmer from being able to introduce himself properly to the British public, and possibly also prevented Labour from being able to pick up the pieces of the party left strewn on the floor by Jeremy Corbyn.
There remains the inconvenient truth that Sir Keir may not be up to the job. He is probably the most inexperienced politician to become opposition leader in the last 100 years, having entered Parliament less than five years before taking over from Corbyn. While David Cameron and Ed Miliband both had similar time as an MP before leading the Opposition, they had much more experience. Ed Miliband had been a government minister and had also previously worked for Labour politicians for years. David Cameron had also been inside government many years before he became an MP, having been one of Norman Lamont’s advisers, filmed walking awkwardly behind the then-Chancellor in 1992 as Lamont announced to the cameras the news of the UK’s forced exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on Black Wednesday.
At roughly the same time Sir Keir, pre-knighthood, was providing pro-bono legal support to a pair of anarchists who had deliberately libelled McDonald’s as a political stunt. It may be reasonable to believe, rather than hope, that there were no further demonstrations of his inclinations as he worked himself up the career ladder to the top of the Crown Prosecution Service.
Sir Keir seems to be depending, as have far too many of his predecessors, on a Black Wednesday-style collapse of government policy before Labour can come off the subs bench, rather than making a better case themselves to the British public and seeing support rise on the back of that case. Certainly, Sir Keir’s honeymoon period with the British public is well and truly over. While Labour might have benefited from government muddles during the onset of the pandemic, this has evaporated as the vaccine has finally arrived, especially as Britain has been shown to lead Europe in immunising her population.
It also appears that Sir Keir has not quite got to grips with the legacy of Corbynism in the Labour Party, after a good start marked by the sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey and the voluntary backbench exile of Lloyd Russell-Moyle. Jeremy Corbyn has been re-admitted to the Labour Party, while remaining suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party. However Corbyn has taken Labour to court over this, inviting judicial intrusion into the organisation of political parties. If Corbyn wins his case, Sir Keir will be badly damaged at a time when the polls have turned against him.
It may not be premature to speculate about who should succeed Sir Keir. Certainly, unless there is some cause for a positive reversal of the party’s fortunes, Labour is set to endure a record-breaking fifth successive postwar electoral defeat. The problem Labour has is that, unlike the Conservatives, its processes for defenestrating an underperforming leader benefit the hapless incumbent unless he wants to go of his own volition. If Sir Keir does not plan on stepping down within the next 12 months, Labour will be stuck with him for the next general election.
So who could replace Sir Keir? While it is tempting to suggest he should be replaced by Labour’s first woman leader, no woman MP has made her mark as leadership material in this Parliament. Anneliese Dodds has not cut through positively, despite the negative economic news, and Rachel Reeves is languishing opposite Michael Gove, whose own role has taken him, and thus her, away from high-profile post-Brexit matters. The position of Foreign Secretary is a form of exile from domestic politics and that also applies to the shadow position occupied by Lisa Nandy. The idea of Emily Thornberry making a second tilt at the job, should it become vacant, is ludicrous, given her poor showing during the last contest.
Hence the position of Leader of the Opposition appears to be Jon Ashworth’s for the taking. The Shadow Health Secretary has had a good pandemic, if that is not a too crass way to put it. Unlike Long-Bailey’s successor at Education, Kate Green, he has not been trying to make tasteless political capital over what is actually a natural disaster, but has been providing critical opposition. But Ashworth has also reportedly garnered praise from Matt Hancock for the way he has worked with the Government during this health emergency.
Ashworth’s education and career path seems similar to David Cameron’s, including being at the heart of government after leaving university with a PPE-style degree, so he has the kind of experience that Sir Keir sorely lacks. Ashworth’s political nous has meant that he persisted in the Shadow Health position after the change of party leader, and he even survived the disclosure of a private telephone conversation about the disastrous nature of Labour’s prospects during the 2019 general election. Ashworth seems to have managed to stay outside the Brexit brouhaha — unlike Sir Keir who, even though he was Shadow Brexit Secretary, still did not have to put forward a second referendum policy, especially one that included Remain as an option.
Ashworth has been an MP for almost a decade now which, barring exceptions such as Cameron, seems the standard minimum to lead one of the two main parties successfully. He also has the now important advantage of representing a provincial town, Leicester, rather than a seat in North or Central London, and so could claim to be outside the metropolitan bubble. Unlike Doncaster MP Ed Miliband, Ashworth is not a London-based politician parachuted into a non-London seat. Ashworth seems to tick all the relevant boxes, apart from not being female. His Left-wing politics seem to be of the unfrightening variety.
The Labour leadership race is not officially on, but were it to be so, Ashworth could be the king-maker for another candidate, perhaps gaining the Shadow Chancellor position for himself. And if not the king-maker, Ashworth could take the top spot himself. While Leader of the Opposition may be the toughest job in British politics, it is possible that with Ashworth in the job, in the manner of Tony Blair, he could make it look like one of the easiest.
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