Hate and (Class) War

Politicians are usually assessed by the public in two ways: what they have done and what they stand for. The two are not necessarily in harmony. Many people objected to Margaret Thatcher's monetarist policies and disregard for industry in the early 1980s, leading to very poor opinion poll ratings at the time, but voted for her and the Conservatives in 1983 because of what they believed she (very personally) stood for following the successful recapture of the Falkland Islands. More recently, the public came to despise Tony Blair because of what they felt he stood for - duplicity, arrogance, contempt towards the weak - despite agreeing with many (though not all) of his policies on the NHS, education and criminal justice. In some cases, a politician's image - i.e. their symbolism - can outweigh their record, hence Kenneth Clarke's reputation for conviviality, even when reduced to the props of a Havana cigar, a pair of suede Hush Puppies and an evening at Ronnie Scott's, always counted for more than his track record as Health Secretary or Chancellor of the Exchequer.

It's worth bearing this in mind when we turn to the issue that has baffled the best brains in British political commentary over the course of the year: why do so many people hate Keir Starmer? Some think that it is down to what he has done, or failed to do, specifically the bad policy decisions made by the government, such as the removal of the winter fuel allowance. But many of the policies that he has been criticised for from the left, such as the disability benefit reforms and the initial continuation of the two-child benefit cap, are still popular with the wider population. The regular criticism from the commentariat that no one knows what this government's true purpose is suggests a lack of major policy goals. This isn't wholly fair - the government has done a fair bit, if only due to the momentum given by plans laid well before this parliament - but it does suggest that the public's response would more likely be one of boredom rather than visceral dislike. Even the well-publicised u-turns and waterings-down, from environmental policy to Europe, are more likely to stimulate disappointment rather than outright hatred.

The latest attempt to explain this, by the Financial Times Political Editor, George Parker, is fascinating because of the insights it provides not into Starmer and the government but into the commentariat itself. For example, an unnamed polling director says "For a rather dull and inoffensive politician, Starmer does generate remarkable levels of hate", which displays a condescending assumption about the bovine nature of the electorate. The FT piece includes a chart showing Starmer's popularity ratings steadily falling since the general election. What the chart barely shows is that he was unpopular before then: the anomaly is having hit a net approval rating near zero at election time, which clearly reflected the spillover of popular optimism that we might finally be rid of the incompetent Tories. The reality is that the wider population never liked him and a greater exposure has not changed their minds. Luke Tryl, of the uber-centrist More in Common outfit, admits that Starmer was never popular but thinks that this means he, and the rest of the cabinet, haven't been given the benefit of the doubt in office: "People didn’t just think that they were rubbish, they thought they were bad faith actors."

Inevitably, some see the fault not in our political stars but in ourselves, or at least the swinish multitude, thus Tom Baldwin talks of "ungovernability" and fears that "Something is going on with the electorate". Gideon Skinner of Ipsos thinks Starmer & co have simply inherited a wider problem: "There has been entrenched pessimism over the way that government works going on for many years". The key to my mind in all this is Parker's assessment: "Starmer and Reeves have made plenty of mistakes, as even their allies admit, and the change they promised has been slow in coming. But for technocratic, low-key politicians, the level of opprobrium they attract from voters is striking." This reflects a worldview that simply cannot comprehend why anyone would object to dull technocrats. The commentariat spent so long promoting Starmer as the adult in the room, the competent manager, the liberal authoritarian of their dreams, that they failed to see how unpopular this style of centrist managerialism had become. With Reform and the Greens now being characterised as "twin populisms", it is clear that the lesson hasn't been learned.

One obvious reason for this reluctance to face reality, and thus for the continuing air of bewilderment among people paid to understand politics, is the complicity of the commentariat in pushing bullshit and excusing fraud from 2010's austerity onwards through Brexit down to today's partisan battles over Palestine, trans rights and asylum-seekers. It's also worth emphasising that while the bulk of the population have only a superficial understanding of the antisemitism shenanigans that roiled the Labour Party, and limited sympathy for its victims, there is a popular appreciation that the "winners" are unprincipled and untrustworthy, which is certainly one reason why Starmer is regularly accused of being a liar. But the Prime Minister isn't merely the face of an uninspiring and regularly disappointing government. He is also seen as a creature of the media, in much the same way that Boris Johnson was, and therefore symbolic of the entire politico-media class. Or the caste, if you prefer. And we should  really prefer that term in order to distinguish it from class in its proper sense.

What this disingenuous performance of bafflement reflects is a gap in the mental furniture of the caste, and that gap is class. Since the 1980s, if not before, political journalists and opinion columnists have excised the very idea of collective action, and thus of collective responsibility and the motivating power of shared interests, from their worldview. This has been replaced with an emphasis on the individual, the neoliberal monad, hence the greater focus on personal ambition. Even factional struggle has been reduced to personalities, famously in the case of Blair vs Brown. Today, ideology is seen in wholly instrumental terms, thus Wes Streeting can be commended for insincerely changing his tune to win over the "soft left". There has also been a steady normalisation of cupidity among politicians. The theme of the various investigations into expenses scandals over the years, usually led by rightwing newspapers like the Telegraph, has been "they're all at it". The purpose isn't to encourage the public to elect virtuous MPs who will clean the Augean stables but to accept that this is the way of the world.

But while class may rarely feature in newspaper commentary or in political programmes on TV it remains natural for the mass of people to think in class terms, however inchoate. When we look at Parliament, the common interests are those of the classic bourgeois recognisable since the days of Balzac and Thackeray: landlordism, the bribery of public officials, the preferment of friends and relations. But there is also a much more modern aspect to this, and that is the moralising, hectoring language of business leaders that has become the political lingua franca since Thatcher and has given us the stunted vocabulary of "hard choices", "modernisation" and "value for money". And a further layer is added by the contemporary appetite among politicians for the performance of an impossible discipline to appease an imaginary reactionary: impermeable borders, every malefactor punished, every sign of dissent cracked down on. 

This is, above all else, an ugly political culture that reflects an ugly class reality: the dominance of wealth in public policy and the media, the toleration of public squalor, and the hypocrisy of our foreign relations. Starmer is simply the clueless lightening-rod for the entire politico-media caste. The commentariat's bafflement at his unpopularity is an attempt to create some distance between themselves and a doomed individual, to deny all knowledge of his origins and elevation ("success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan"). But this is futile. It is precisely because most people have made the connection that Starmer is hated, and it is because the commentariat cannot acknowledge this that they remain in public denial. Until he is put out of his misery, we will have to suffer more columns wondering why he isn't as good as the writer hoped and more puff-pieces arguing that a more telegenic version, cut from the same managerial cloth, will surely turn round the government's fortunes.