And so Starmer turns the page on the disastrous Corbyn era

Keir Starmer spent the leadership contest treading carefully between left and right, revolution and evolution, trying to persuade the moderates he was one of them while also keeping the Corbynistas on side. The strategy of triangulating between the Progress and Momentum wings of the party won him a resounding victory last weekend. Now that he is leader he has quickly made clear which side he is really on.

On Monday, one shadow cabinet minister told me Starmer “has to have a visual and symbolic break with the Corbyn years.” And in his first week he has done just that. He immediately apologised unreservedly to the Jewish community for the anti-semitism that had taken hold under Jeremy Corbyn, promised in his acceptance speech to do everything in his power to “tear out this poison by its roots.” It was a critical moral as well as political statement. Jewish leaders—who were invited to a video conference with the new Labour leader—said he had achieved “in four days more than his predecessor in four years.”

Corbyn’s key lieutenants were also dispatched to the backbenches with brutal efficiency by Starmer. Some of them jumped before they were pushed but a shadow cabinet that included John McDonnell, Diane Abbott, Richard Burgon and Barry Gardiner has been replaced by one that has Anneliese Dodds, Lisa Nandy, David Lammy and Rachel Reeves in its ranks. The public face of the Labour Party has now been completely transformed in a way that goes way beyond the new man at the top.

Rebecca Long-Bailey—defeated by Starmer in the leadership contest—was the only Corbyn loyalist to survive. In fact, by appointing Ed Miliband, the new Labour leader seemed to be by-passing his immediate predecessor altogether. Charlie Falconer, Tony Blair’s former flat mate, has been brought in as shadow attorney general instead of Shami Chakrabarti, who produced a much-criticised report into anti-semitism for Corbyn.

This shadow cabinet has a very different set of values on the economy and foreign policy to Corbyn’s top team. Dodds, the new shadow chancellor, does not share McDonnell’s Marxist instincts. Instead of yearning for the overthrow of capitalism, she cited Gordon Brown as her role model this week, telling Radio 4’s Today programme that “it’s necessary to make sure that taxpayers’ money is spent wisely.”

Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, was deeply critical of Corbyn’s approach to Russia during the leadership contest. “In foreign policy I think we got it really badly wrong,” she told me recently in an interview for the Times Magazine. “Our job has always been to stand with working people across the world, not with the dictators that oppress them. So over the Skripal incident, for example, the bad mistake that we made was to stand with Putin over the Russian people... For a lot of my constituents it felt like we weren’t standing up for them.” Unlike Corbyn, she said she would press the nuclear button. “The first job of any government is to keep its people safe.”

It is such a strange time for a new leader to inherit the Labour Party. As the government takes unprecedented powers, and the economy teeters on the brink, the country urgently needs a credible opposition to hold ministers to account but the voters are in no mood for petty political point-scoring. So far Starmer has got the tone right, raising specific concerns about testing and protective equipment for example, while promising to engage constructively with the government in efforts to control the pandemic.

It will be hard for him to get his voice heard, but the national emergency also gives him time to sort out the internal problems in the Labour Party while the Westminster spotlight is elsewhere. There will be a backlash from the left at some point but Starmer has the authority and mandate to see his critics off. One shadow cabinet minister believes the pandemic could give him an excuse to dump elements of the Corbyn policy platform which he signed up to during the leadership contest. “Coronovirus gives him a get out because the world has changed in a way none of us could have envisaged. The policy challenges facing society have been transformed.”

Starmer, a former director of public prosecutions, has the advantage that he looks like a serious candidate for prime minister. Voters can imagine him on the steps of No 10 in a way they never could with Corbyn or Miliband. One moderate former minister says: “He has to be given the benefit of the doubt but if he carries on as in the campaign it’s just Ed M Mark II.” At the same time though, he adds that “the Corbyn era was so disastrous and culturally awful that anything is better.” Starmer is “buying at the bottom of the market” which is to his advantage.

The fundamental divide in the Labour Party is between those who want to get into power and those who see politics as a protest movement. For the hard left, getting into government has always been seen as a betrayal. Starmer does not see it like that—he moved from the law to politics because he wanted the chance to make a difference to the way the country is run. Having lost four elections in a row Labour is “failing in our historic purpose” he said this week. His aim is to get his party back into government and “where that requires change, we will change.” It is now clear that he knows that means turning the page on the disastrous Corbyn era.