LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer offered tiny solutions to huge problems today as he outlined the baby steps the party will take in office to address Britain’s crisis.
Dubbed “six first steps,” the policies overlap heavily with the Tory agenda and show the Labour leader ever-more channelling Tony Blair, even down to putting the policies on a pledge card.
Sir Keir launched the priorities in Essex surrounded by the shadow cabinet and with sundry endorsements, including one from a Bullingdon Club friend of Foreign Secretary David Cameron.
He ducked questions on winning back voters alienated by his support for Israel over Gaza and said “the most important thing about Blair is that he won three elections.”
On the economy, Labour offers only a commitment to “stability” based on austerity-style control of public spending and a hope that growth will nevertheless appear.
Establishing a publicly owned clean energy company, GB Energy, is all that remains of the radicalism of Sir Keir’s 10 pledges when seeking the Labour leadership.
Other ”first steps” include setting up a grandiose border security command to halt Channel boat crossings to outflank the Tories and a crackdown on “anti-social behaviour.”
Sir Keir told his audience that even these “first steps” could take two full terms in office — 10 years — to fully implement.
That makes their modesty still more striking. One pledge is to recruit 6,500 new teachers when 40,000 leave schools each year, equating to one-fifth of a new teacher each for Britain’s schools.
On the NHS, a first step commitment to provide 40,000 more appointments each week is equivalent to just a 2 per cent rise.
All this was welcomed by Lord Cameron’s friend, Boots chief executive Seb James, who particularly praised Labour’s “sensible fiscal measures.”
It was less welcome to Labour left organisation Momentum, which decried the party’s lack of radicalism.
A spokesman said: “These fixes fall desperately short of the bold policies needed to fix the Tories’ broken Britain.
“Starmer is failing to break with the Conservatives’ disastrous austerity dogma.
“From raising taxes on the wealthiest to renationalising our public services, Keir’s leadership pledges are more popular and urgently needed than ever.
“Yet Keir broke his promises and today instead of transforming Britain, he offers minor tweaks to a failed Tory settlement.”
SNP deputy leader Mhairi Black, focused on trust, saying that “the problem for Sir Keir is that he has U-turned on nearly every policy he has ever promised — so it’s little wonder the public don’t trust a single promise he now makes.”
The Tories’ Penny Mordaunt responded by summoning up the Beatles, saying Sir Keir was a “nowhere man, sitting in his nowhere land, making all his nowhere plans for nobody.”
