When mischievously invited by Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch to offer some public advice to his successor Andy Burnham, Keir Starmer tactfully declined — at least for now. Stanley Baldwin, outgoing British prime minister in 1937, promised that when he left office he wouldn’t “speak to the man on the bridge or spit on the deck,” and kept his word. Baldwin, however, was an exception among his peers; in practice, few former prime ministers can resist semaphoring the new captain.
Had Starmer taken up Badenoch’s challenge in the House of Commons last week, he would have given short shrift to Burnham’s stated ambition to turn his back on foreign affairs to focus on the home front. In a catty interview with The Independent, former Tory Prime Minister John Major, however, articulated the thought: “Mr Burnham has had great success with buses (as Mayor of Greater Manchester), I am told. A little different from dealing with Trump, Xi, Macron and Merz.”
Burnham can laugh off Major, who complained of backseat driving by his own predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, only to offer unwelcome advice to almost all of his successors. He will also have noted that Starmer was mocked as “Never Here Keir” by the tabloids for summiteering abroad while ducking difficult decisions at home. Still, foreign affairs leave a large domestic footprint on a medium-sized power like the UK.
In his formal reply to Badenoch, Starmer made veiled but no less telling points about a PM’s duty to lift his gaze from the domestic horizon. Citing it as one of his proudest achievements as PM, Starmer boasted of saving 100,000 jobs at Tata Motors Ltd.’s Jaguar Land Rover factory by personally lobbying President Donald Trump to ease his tariff regime.
In June, China’s global car exports topped one million for the first time, an increase of more than 60% in just a single year that will have a significant bearing on what’s left of UK domestic manufacturing, which Burnham has pledged to revive. Britain is now likely to become Beijing’s dumping ground if, as seems likely, the US and Europe raise their tariff walls. Starmer’s last-gasp nationalization of the steel industry, owned by a Chinese company that answers to the ruling Communist party, has implications beyond these shores, too. And Burnham’s desire for better trade relations with Europe are evident in his passionate comments about the benefits of a more pro-European stance, but success there will surely require his personal intervention; as Starmer discovered to his cost, sending others on shuttle diplomacy to Brussels seeking to reconnect tends to deliver a big fat not very much.
Whatever his political shortcomings, the outgoing UK leader understood the country’s pivotal role in maintaining the balance of power in Europe. Today, that means Britain supports Ukraine against Russia with hard cash, munitions, a major special forces commitment and diplomacy. Last week, Starmer was decorated with the Legion d’Honneur by French President Emmanuel Macron in recognition of his honorable efforts. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s existential crisis can’t be ignored by Burnham either. As Baron Hastings Ismay, Winston Churchill’s military advisor and NATO’s original secretary general, observed, the alliance was created “to keep the Americans in, the Germans down and the Russians out.” Today, the Germans are the good guys, the Russians are at the gates and America wants out. The defense of the realm is the first duty of any prime minister.
Any further honest counsel would also include an admission from Starmer that he had tried and failed to address his party’s central historic flaw dating as far back as the 1930s. Successive Labour governments have increased public spending but failed to find the wherewithal to pay for it. Tony Blair’s government was exceptional in that regard, but then he was the beneficiary of a Thatcherite financial-services economy running at full throttle. Today, public-sector debt is close to £3 trillion ($4 trillion) and the markets don’t trust the ruling party to pay it down as growth stagnates. Starmer’s own maladroit attempts to restrain welfare spending led to open rebellion by his own backbenchers. “If economic conditions weaken or political pressures intensify, future spending restraint may prove difficult to implement,” the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development warned last week.
So much for the future. Now is daunting enough. The economist Andrew Lilico has dubbed the so-called ironclad fiscal rules of departing Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves as “manana politics” — excuses for not cutting the deficit today but putting it off until tomorrow. In the meantime, spending on health has increased, while more money has been committed to extra defense and special educational needs — but the source of that additional funding remains unclear.
Earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund cautioned Burnham that raising the top rate of income tax would hurt the economy by discouraging work, and recommended higher rates on the lower paid instead. The likely new chancellor, current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, calls herself a “fiscal hawk” — but Labour MPs have shown they can’t abide spending cuts.
Burnham’s inclination may therefore be to call an election as early as 2027 before his party’s perennial fiscal cul-de-sac becomes all too apparent. Given that Starmer never recovered from his failure to set an agenda in his first few months in office, my own advice to Burnham would be to make his first 100 days count. Bold, big-bang reforms will give him the confidence to face the electorate.
This report is auto generated from the Bloomberg opinion service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.