Demands for change are the raw material of politics. Keir Starmer needs to start addressing them
Labour leaders love to talk about values. Gordon Brown and Jeremy Corbyn both paid homage to what the latter called “shared majority British values”. Last month, Keir Starmer held up the party’s narrow win in Batley and Spen as proof that “when we are true to our values … Labour can win”. More recently his new chief strategist, the pollster Deborah Mattinson, was reported as arguing that Labour’s primary challenge is to develop “clearer, sharper, more uplifting messaging about the party’s values”.
So far the Labour leader has adhered with particular intensity to an orthodoxy according to which “values” are the wellspring of political engagement – and therefore Labour can do nothing until it convinces the electorate it shares their values. This is a terrible mistake. Politics is not grounded in values but in demands.