Starmer’s Stockholm Syndrome over the Daily Mail

I thought of that conversation as I read about Sue Gray being fired. Everyone was saying she had done nothing wrong, she had just become the story. She had become “a distraction,” like Andy Coulson when David Cameron was prime minister, or Dominic Cummings under Boris Johnson.

Except not like them at all. Coulson and Cummings became a story because they were a story, because they had done something. Gray did nothing wrong. 

She was a public relations asset – she helped give the government gravitas. The worst anyone seemed to have on her was that she rearranged the desks in Downing Street and Morgan McSweeney found himself sitting further away from the PM. 

She was the story because she was the story. Because the Daily Mail has never forgiven her for the report that sank Boris Johnson, and a few disgruntled Spads were willing to help the press with titbits of office gossip. 

Which means that the Daily Mail, particularly in collaboration with other right wing papers, can now dictate who advises the prime minister. If they want to be rid of someone, they have only to make that person the story, a distraction.

Keir Starmer has played into their hands by unwisely accepting gifts. (How did that get under the radar of Starmer’s experienced Mandelson-trained communications director Matthew Doyle?) And Starmer is now very afraid of them. He thinks they are more powerful than they are.

This explains his caution about re-entering the EU, or the single market. He knows that public opinion has moved decisively against Brexit, and he knows the damage that Johnson’s hard Brexit is doing to the economy. Yet he still insists it won’t be reversed in his lifetime. 

It explains why he has boxed himself in on tax; for otherwise the right wing press would say he was profligate with taxpayers’ money.

It explains the decision to exclude Emily Thornberry from government. Thornberry served with distinction in the shadow cabinet for eight years, and is clever, and fast, and funny. 

Asked about the manufactured story that Sue Gray’s salary was slightly higher than the PM’s, Thornberry said how pleased she was to see a man ensuring his female chief of staff is better paid than he is. Starmer doesn’t have anyone around him with that sort of style and aplomb. 

He could have done with Thornberry in government. But she is a pet hate at the Daily Mail, which, had she been given a cabinet job, would have revived her ten-year-old gaffe, when she tweeted a picture of a white van outside a house with three England flags on it.

It even helps explain the winter fuel cut, which will save the government small change if anything, but was supposed to signal financial probity.

It explains Starmer’s extraordinary clampdown on dissent. Labour’s candidate in Chingford, Faiza Shaheen, had been in place for two years, but she criticised Israel’s actions in Gaza, and Labour strategists feared that the right wing press would accuse her, falsely, of anti-Semitism. So Starmer disowned her, put in an outsider to fight the seat, and thereby threw away a seat that Labour could have won. 

He intended to axe veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott too, because he feared that the Daily Mail would use an ill-advised tweet, for which she instantly apologised, to accuse her, also falsely, of anti-Semitism. 

All this failed utterly to spike the guns of the Daily Mail, whose visceral loathing of Starmer and all his works screams from its pages every day. Here’s one typical week of Mail front page splashes: 

October 4: STARMER’S SURRENDER (this is his “shameful retreat” over the Chagos islands.)

October 5: HANDS OFF OUR FALKLANDS! (“Argentine, emboldened by Starmer’s surrender of Chagos…”) 

(October 6 was a Sunday.)

October 7: SUE GRAY FARCE SHOW’S PM’S LACK OF JUDGEMENT, BLASTS KEMI

October 8: COME CLEAN ON WHAT LORD ALLI GOT FOR HIS CASH!

(On October 9 the splash was about Russia.)

October 10: BUSINESS FURY AT LABOUR REVOLUTION FOR WORKERS 

October 12: REEVES TAX HIKE PLAN THAT “WILL COST BILLIONS”

On October 12, the day the splash was not about Starmer, the second item on the front page was: “Labour looks venal and corrupt over Taylor Swift furore.” The king took up the next few pages, but Starmer reappeared on page 6, with three headlines: “Labour’s 100 days of disaster!” then “Now 13,000 have crossed the channel since election” and finally “’Negative’ Reeves blamed as GDP rises just 0.2%.”

One page 7 and 8 it was “Come clean, Yvette – why did Swift get VVIP escort?” Page 8 is all about how Lord Alli “schmoozed his way back to the heart of the Labour Party.” 

A double page spread on pages 16-17 was headlined “Starmer’s first 100 days have been an unprecedented shambles.” Beside it, the editorial comment was headlined “PM gives us deceit and disappointment.”

The next page is an ad, and the page after that was headlined “Labour looks venal and corrupt.” Finally, on page 26, was the headline: “Husband of Labour MP in storm over career in marines.” Apparently the spouse of one of Starmer’s newest MPs says on his CV that he was in the Marines, but the Mail claims he didn’t finish his training. 

Finally there were the finance pages, and “City warns Reeves against ‘disastrous’ pensions tax raid.”

Starmer’s government can boast real achievement in its first 100 days, most notably an end to long-running disputes in hospitals and the railways. But there could be so much more.

Sir Keir, the Daily Mail hates you, with passion, bitterness and bile. No trimming on policy will ever buy you forgiveness for being a Labour prime minister and for helping to bring down Boris Johnson. 

The right wing press called Clem Attlee “Hitler” for wanting to bring in a National Health Service. Newspapers then mattered far more than they do now, because they were the only source of news. 

Clem took no notice. He got on with the job, and he changed Britain for the better. So should you. 

Francis Beckett’s play Vodka with Stalin is at Upstairs at the Gatehouse in Highgate Village until October 27.