24 Britain The EconomistApril 4th 2020
T
he labourleadership contest began in one world and is end-
ing in another. The candidates have swapped crowded halls for
Zoom conference calls. Supporters conduct their debates in virtual
chat rooms rather than crowded pubs. The new leader will be an-
nounced in a round-robin email rather than, as had been planned,
at a Westminster rally with full razzmatazz.
The email will be sent on April 4th, after The Economistgoes to
press, but, barring an earthquake, the new leader will be Sir Keir
Starmer, the party’s Brexit spokesman. Sir Keir has led by a country
mile in every stage of the contest from nominations by mps to sup-
port from trade unions and local constituencies. Most opinion
polls have pointed to a decisive victory. The winner of the (sepa-
rately elected) deputy leadership is likely to be Angela Rayner, who
is currently self-isolating with symptoms of the coronavirus.
Sir Keir, if indeed it is him, will enjoy two substantial advan-
tages from the get-go. The first, and most important, is that he’s
not Jeremy Corbyn. Mr Corbyn has been the party’s most disas-
trous leader ever—not just useless like George Lansbury and Mi-
chael Foot, who led the party to electoral disaster in 1935 and 1983
respectively, but positively malign. His failure to throw his party’s
weight behind the Remain campaign contributed significantly to
Britain’s decision to leave the eu, which most of the membership
opposed. His refusal to meet Theresa May half-way during the dy-
ing days of her administration killed off any chance of a soft Brexit.
His extreme politics and sanctimonious style drove traditional La-
bour voters into Boris Johnson’s arms.
The second is that the Labour Party is tired of failing. The less-
awful-than-expected defeat of 2017 persuaded the faithful that
what they needed was more effort rather than fresh thought. The
catastrophic failure of 2019 dispelled that illusion and reconciled
all but fanatics to the idea that politics is the art of the possible. Sir
Keir’s sustained lead means that he has been able to avoid making
pledges to various factions and will take over with a blank sheet of
paper and a powerful mandate.
There’s a widespread view that the epidemic has provided Sir
Keir with a third advantage: a political environment that is shifting
sharply leftward. The government’s decision to pump money into
the economy and nationalise key industries is not only demon-strating the vital importance of the state in coping with a disaster,
the argument goes. It is moving the boundaries of what is political-
ly acceptable. How can the Tories make fun of “magic money trees”
when they have discovered a forest of them? How can they argue
against “picking winners” when they are choosing companies to
make ventilators? Mr Corbyn says that the government’s response
to covid-19 proves that he was “absolutely right” to call for higher
public spending. Some prominent Labour politicians, such as Ian
Lavery and Rebecca Long-Bailey, have been overheard arguing that
the crisis contains opportunities for the left. Such views are ech-
oed outside the party: several Cabinet ministers have expressed
concern that they won the election only to find themselves imple-
menting Labour’s policies.
The sense that the wind is blowing leftwards is not confined to
Britain. “The corona crisis is not without its advantages,” says Ul-
rike Herrmann, a German anti-capitalist. Thinkers such as Thom-
as Piketty, Naomi Klein and Grace Blakeley are hanging all their fa-
vourite policies on covid-19 like baubles on a Christmas tree: a
radical redistribution of wealth here, a green new deal there and,
posed on top, the angelic vision of a universal basic income.
Yet the notion that covid-19 is the herald of a socialist nirvana is
not entirely convincing. True, massive external shocks such as the
current pandemic can certainly shake-up political allegiances,
particularly when they are as weak as they are at the moment. And
in some ways, the left is having a good crisis: institutions to which
it is wedded, such as the bbcand the National Health Service, are
more admired than ever. Right-wing blowhards such as Donald
Trump are more reviled, in Britain at least.
But the current expansion of the state does not represent a
philosophical conversion to the case for revolution. It is a prag-
matic response to a unique set of problems: a combination of
Keynesian demand management to boost the economy, time-lim-
ited intervention to prevent industries from collapsing and a basic
income for workers who are temporarily laid off. This debt-fuelled
expansion will certainly lead to higher taxes in the long term but it
will also put a constraint on the state’s future ambitions.
Talk about a new settlement comparable with that under La-
bour in 1945 is particularly far-fetched. Scientists are confident
that they will find a cure for the virus eventually, perhaps within a
year. When that blessed day comes, voters will desire nothing so
much as a “return to normalcy”, just as they did in the 1920s after
the first world war and the Spanish flu. They will see the covid era
not as a time of ideological renewal but as a temporary crisis that
involved a weird combination of admirable collectivism and irri-
tating restrictions on personal freedom.Do not adjust your belief set
The job of leading the opposition during a national crisis is argu-
ably the worst in the world. Britons are rallying around the govern-
ment: one poll shows the Conservatives leading Labour by 28
points and 72% of voters saying that they are satisfied with Mr
Johnson’s performance as prime minister. Sir Keir’s best chance of
success lies in playing to his strengths as a post-ideological prag-
matist. In public he should ask practical questions about the gov-
ernment’s performance in producing ventilators and covid tests or
getting economic help to the vulnerable, while avoiding the im-
pression that he’s sniping. Behind the scenes he should prepare for
normal times by clearing out Mr Corbyn’s most scrofulous follow-
ers. If he bets on a new era of big-government socialism, he will
waste his political capital. 7Bagehot The return of the opposition
Labour’s new leader should beware of “war socialism”