There are few things less exciting than the prospect of a Keir Starmer speech.
Watching him try to engage an audience is like watching someone’s dad talk to his teenage daughter’s friends.
The anticipation is similar to that felt when you discover it’s the finance manager’s turn to give the weekly team update.
Listening to it, when it does finally come, is much like listening to a plastic bag that’s caught in a tree flutter in the wind. It’s empty and yet somehow, still annoying.
But like death, we know it will come sooner or later. And this week, it did.
He did his homework, I’m sure. Coached in all the rules for good speech-making by a doubtless increasingly desperate team of choreographers and secretly watching speeches by Obama and Churchill for weeks, taking notes.
He’s underlined all the important bits of his speech with red pens, and when he gets to them he’ll get louder, or thump his finger on the lectern with vigour and purpose. It’s there in the notes to remind him when to be authentic.
He’s highlighted all the parts where he thinks he should pause for dramatic effect too. He’s practised in the bathroom mirror until bedtime.
We know. And yet. And yet. There is just something that isn’t there, and never will be.
It is perhaps admirable and worth protecting that our main political parties still often choose their leaders, at least in part, because of their policy positions rather than their charisma. After all, we are surrounded by a growing rabble of charismatic, egotistical narcissists gnashing and scoffing their way to power and I’m not convinced more of them will improve matters.
But in the face of the rise of these grunting, manipulative men there is still room for a leader who can communicate their ideas with clarity, purpose and a sense of passion, in a way that the rest of us can get hold of and cling to.
The ones we remember could do it. Tony Blair, Boris Johnson, David Cameron. All bastards, but all able to get the message over.
But not Keir Starmer.
Harsh though that reality is, whether you are Keir yourself, or you are faced with the prospect of listening to Keir, it is reality even so.
So, it was with some substantial doubt in myself that I choose, without obligation, to listen to his speech to the Labour Party conference 2025.
To manage the jitters, I decided I would do it on my hands and knees in a field, getting wet from the rain whilst weeding out unwanted plants. There is something in the tactile that gets me through times like these, and the occasional discovery of a toad or a ladybird did somehow help make the experience manageable. God knows how the delegates at the conference got through it.
And so it started, drifting along with the energy of a deflating balloon, full of predictable anecdotes and references to lines that had already been floated for the media. A lot of words with very little to bind them.
But then, suddenly, I was jolted.
Did he just say that?
“We placed too much faith in globalisation.”
The G word. I’d not heard it from a politician’s mouth for years.
“The establishment,” he went on, “across so many institutions,” was, he explained, “in hock to its lazy assumptions.”
Where was he going? Were we about to experience a renaissance in British politics? An awakening to the harms of the global economic system, of extractive capitalism and the manipulation of people into consumers for the benefit of the few? Of the raping and pillaging of our planet’s living and non-living systems by “the establishment” or the violent crushing of dissent, or even just variety, in the name of growth and an ever-expanding global economy?
Obviously, no.
In fact, we were never to find out what these “lazy assumptions” were because he moved on, to bang on about immigration again.
He’s right though. Globalisation, the ever-expanding reach of capitalism and economic-growth-mindset into every facet of every life in every town, is the problem. Its control of what we buy, we see, we do and ever increasingly, what we read and think, replacing dignity with servitude, quality with quantity, variety with homogeneity, patience with pace, pride with insecurity, these are the damage it wreaks.
What problems had he spotted with it? Well, the high street, the pubs, the youth clubs, all of them, we were told, are “struggling against the tide of decline” for one thing.
And wealth creation, is being “hoarded by just a few communities.” It’s not wealth that’s being hoarded you might notice, despite the repugnant cabal of frenzied billionaires that can’t stay out of the spotlight, but “wealth creation.” And not people that are hoarding, but communities. I started to wonder what was going on here.
And then, in words that seem to say almost nothing, there was the “world” which we have come to believe is “always on hand to give us the goods.” A passing and disinterested nod, perhaps, towards planetary limits.
With this vapid analysis of the symptoms, were we readied for the solutions. The ones that will address that grating feeling across the country that we’re all being pissed on. The ones that will tackle the threats of globalisation head-on.
The “extremes of the left,” he monotoned, do not even want to renew Britain. But he did. He had the solutions to this previously impenetrable problem.
And here they came…
“Unlocking the potential of every community”
Sounds good.
“Embedding wealth creation in every single community.”
Not sure what that means, but OK.
“Putting working people in control of their public services.”
What is that? Does that mean I have to drive the bus? What is that?
“Getting rid of mindless bureaucracy so we can build and keep building.”
Building? Where did that come from?
“Stripping out bad regulation.”
Hang on. Isn’t stripping out regulation what capitalism does?
“A more a muscular state…”
Eesh. I’m not sure about that.
“An escape from red tape that stops us building.”
Building again. And regulation again. I’m beginning to doubt these solutions.
“Growing our economy from the grassroots”
“Growing the economy”
“An economy that grows”
“Industrial policy”
“Unleashing British enterprise”
Oh. I see.
It’s growth.
Just growth.
Again.
Freedom for companies to grow. More of capitalism. More of globalisation, with fewer safeguards (known, sometimes, as regulation).
More of the same.
Just growth.
What do we need to tackle the symptoms? More of the cause, of course.
What was perhaps more striking than anything else from that speech, which I listened to all the way through, pulling up chickweed and nettles as the rain fell on my hat, was how brazen our nominal leaders now are in their disregard for peoples’ real needs. They know ‘globalisation’ is harming us, but they also know they can’t do anything about it.
So they sell us, well, snake oil. A different brand to the oil that Farage sells perhaps; not as toxic and potent as that. A snake-oil that’s already been pre-mixed in the bottle to water it down into something blander. It gets us drunk rather than febrile. But snake oil it is.
Sadly, it is precisely because people like Keir Starmer are so very out of touch with, and disinterested in the real, between-the-lines, deeply embedded frustrations with the fundamentals of how the modern West works, that charismatic, populist, gut-wrenchingly unpleasant men are managing to stir, spit and claw their way up towards power, selling their intoxicating alternative oils.
So, all we get is the continuation of an unflinching commitment to the dominant ideal that politicians can’t really do anything about any of this stuff anymore.
And perhaps he’s right. I suspect he is.
I suspect the solutions do not lie in a more muscular state. I suspect they lie somewhere in the opposite direction. Somewhere where power is devolved massively down, to the hyper-local level, where it is focused not on the demands of sociopathic billionaires and shareholders, but on shopkeepers, food growers, schools, high streets, youth clubs and pubs. Towards living, thriving, localised democracy held by people who are invested in the real lives that they live and who care about the real lives that others live too, whether those people are nearby or far away.
Keir Starmer is worth having in place only because he’s less mean than some of the others. We chose a pathetic king over a psychopathic one. Hardly inspiring. But the response to that pitiful truth is not to vote the nasty one in next time. And it’s certainly not to sacrifice democracy at the alter of frustration. It’s to start to build a better version. One with us, not them, at the top.
Localisation - rebuilding power and democracy in the hands of communities and away from the centre, that is the solution to the symptoms of globalisation. A turn away from the muscular state, and from the impotent politicians, to a trust in the honesty, kindness and power of real people.
The oil salespeople never try to sell us that, because it’s like water. It cleans out the toxins. So thank you Keir Starmer. For all the muttering I did whilst listening to you amongst the chickweed and toads, you helped confirm my suspicions.