Starmer’s digital ID U-turn shows a prime minister in survival mode
A.Another day, another U-turn.
Keir Starmer’s government’s latest escalation, just over 19 months since it won a huge majority in the general election, concerns a widely unpopular plan to introduce mandatory digital ID for workers.
By rough calculation, this is the 13th U-turn, following rollbacks on winter fuel payments, the two-child benefit cap, income tax increases, the removal of business rate relief for pubs and more.
No wonder the Liberal Democrats prescribed motion sickness pills to Downing Street this morning to cope with the number of U-turns the prime minister has made.
Last week a minister suggested that the number of U-turns was a sign of strength because it signaled a government that was “listening”.
This is a charitable way of looking at it, but the truth is that so many U-turns are a sign of one thing; your weakness.
Governments that U-turn often do so because they lack the power to implement their agenda. In fact, it rarely stems from anger in the country.
So the 3 million people who signed the petition against the digital identity plan may have influenced the decision, but the arithmetic in the House of Commons would have been more important.
Most Labor MPs saw the policy as intrusive, too expensive, unnecessary and an attempt to revive the failed Tony Blair plan.
Implementing the original digital identity plan would have been much more difficult than it should have been for a government elected with a majority of 170 fewer than two years ago.
And this is unlikely to be the last U-turn by any means. As has already been reported Independent Some Labor MPs at the weekend are expecting a U-turn on plans to abolish the right to jury trials for all but the most serious offences.
The problem with this government seems to be that the prime minister lacks the authority to implement his own policies and keep those in the background in line.
Since the welfare revolt before the summer, those who had to back down on what were actually modest cuts to the welfare budget knew that if they pushed back strongly enough, he would back down.
Even random, notorious punishments, such as suspending the lashes of some rebels, appear to have little or no effect in restoring order.
The worst kept secret in Westminster is that there will almost certainly be an attempt to replace Starmer as Labor leader and prime minister at some point this year. There are a number of candidates to replace him, including health secretary Wes Streeting, energy minister Ed Miliband, former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and Manchester mayor Andy Burnham.
The problem was that the digital ID was relatively popular with the public except when the prime minister’s name was attached. Labour’s personal unpopularity, reflected in poor polls where the party remains stuck at 19 per cent, is alarming MPs and has a corrosive effect on the government.
A YouGov poll this week found that Starmer had managed to achieve a record level of popularity with the public – and that was before he tried to ban X/Twitter (although a U-turn was expected there too).
The great Tory strategist Lynton Crosby had a saying: “Knocking the barnacles off the boat”.
By this he meant getting rid of unnecessary policies and ideas that distract from the main business of the state, which is its means of survival. This is what political leaders did when trying to weather leadership challenges or limit political damage in elections.
That’s exactly what Sir Keir is doing to retain his premiership. It is in a survival strategy. The problem for the Prime Minister is that rather than knocking the barnacles off his boat, he has lost control of the tiller.
