London — Who is the real Keir Starmer?
The man who won the Labour leadership in 2020 on a platform of left-wing pledges, and who thanked his “friend” Jeremy Corbyn during the contest? Or the one Westminster sees today, who abandoned many of those pledges and kicked Corbyn out of the party?
In a candid interview with POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast, one of Starmer’s closest allies reveals the answer.
“I think what you’re seeing now is his real politics,” said Jenny Chapman, the former Darlington MP who served as Starmer’s political secretary before joining the House of Lords in 2021.
“There was an understanding [in 2020] of the best issues to talk about if you want to become leader of the Labour Party. There is permission there to say, ‘this is the kind of country it would be lovely if it could be,’ because you’re not actually pitching to the entire country to be the prime minister.”
Starmer’s infamous 10 pledges during the leadership campaign included promises to hike income tax and nationalize multiple public services including rail, energy and water. Many of the pledges have since been rolled back, or abandoned altogether.
Chapman said: “The essay question is very different when you’re asking to be leader of a movement, to asking to be prime minister of an entire country — which has people with much, much more diverse needs than our half a million Labour Party members.
“And because he’s made that shift, that is why we have a chance — just a chance — of winning the next election.”
Chapman’s comments, made in the second half of a two-part podcast profile of the man who hopes to be Britain’s next prime minister, will further inflame tensions among those on the left of the Labour Party already angered by Starmer’s changes in position — and give more ammunition to Conservatives fond of pointing out Starmer’s propensity for U-turning on key positions.
Andrew Fisher, Corbyn’s former head of policy, told the podcast: “To say cynically, as Jenny Chapman appears to be saying — reading between the lines only slightly — [that] he said that because that’s what you needed to get members to vote for him… shows a complete contempt for the membership.”
