Can Keir Starmer give Britain the change it desperately wants? | CNN (2024)

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As Britain edges closertowardits general election on July 4, the polls tell the same story they have formostof the past three years:This is a country screaming out for change.

The situation has been dire for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak since he took officein late2022.His governing Conservative Party – whose 14 years in power have been defined by the political gambles of austerity, Brexit and radical economics –fell behind the opposition Labour Party in the polls around November 2021, and the gap has only widened since.

Barring a major shock, Labour leader Keir Starmer will be the person walking through the famous black door of 10 Downing Streetin less than three weeks’ time.

Starmer has promised to be the agent of change that Britain needs. He has pledged to grow thecountry’seconomy by reforming planning laws and investing in a new industrial strategy. Hehas said hewill set up a national wealth fund with £7.3 billion($9.3bn)of public money that will help pay for the transition to net zeroemissions.

An£8.3bn publicly-owned energy company, Great British Energy, will see theUnited Kingdom’s energy griddecarbonizedby 2030. Starmer says all this can be achieved without raising income taxes, though there are no commitmentson other levies, such as capital gains tax, which is paid on money made from selling assets, including property and shares.

The rest of theLabourmanifesto combines a mix of modest centrism mixed with soft socialism.It includes imposingtaxes on private schools tohelppay for state education and windfalllevieson energy companies to fund the transition to clean energy. There arealsocommitments on workers’ rights, cutting waiting lists for health careandalso controlling immigration.

Critics on the right say that Starmer will need to raise taxes to fund his plans, whileskepticson the left say his manifesto is not bold or ambitious enough to change Britain for the better.

This is a Britain, of course, that has hadrecord-highinflation over the past two years, watched interest ratesskyrocket, seen the pound sink to a record lowagainst the dollar,is still in acost-of-livingcrisis, has had the longest waiting times formedicaloperations in recent history and has spent the past eight years in political turmoil following the2016vote to leave the European Union.

In short,this isa long list of things to sort out in a five-year term when public finances are in disarray. The question for Starmer, should he win, is whether the mess is too big for him to fix and whether he has the political skill to bring about the change he has promised.

Who is Keir Starmer?

On paper,the 61-year-oldStarmer looks like a classic establishment figure.

Once a leading human rights lawyer, he became Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in 2008, running the Crown Prosecution Service of England and Wales –a high-profile job for which he was knighted, making him the first ever Labour leader to enter the job with the prefix Sir to their name.

Starmer, however, is - by the standards of modern political leaders - from relatively humble beginnings.

Starmer speaks while Director of Public Prosecutions, in 2010.

Born in 1962, Starmer grew up in a small town to the south of London. His father was a toolmaker who worked in a factory, his mother was a nurse who suffered with severe physical disabilities, which ultimately led to one of her legs being amputated.

While Starmer has never claimed to have suffered poverty, he has talked of financial struggles that affected his family, as well as the learning difficulties that held back his younger brother.

Clearly, these early experiences shaped Starmer’s politics. He has talked about noticing people looking down on his father for working in a factory or bullying his brother. His parents were political, naming theireldest after the first Labour leader in parliament, Keir Hardie.

“He’s the first Labour leader in a generation to talk about class and snobbery,”Tom Baldwin, author of “Keir Starmer: The Biography,”told CNN.“This doesn’t make him a class warrior but someone who understands the different layers of pride, aspiration and guilt… He feels the sting of the disrespect his dad experienced… He talks a lot about his sister who has led a precarious life as a carer, having not gone to university,” Baldwin added.

Starmer chose to study law at the University of Leeds, before completing a postgraduatedegreeat the University of Oxford. He initially thought he would have a legal career working for trade unions, but as his politics evolved in line with his studies, he became increasingly interested in human rights.

What does he believe?

Starmer has been on something of a journey since entering politics. He was elected to Parliament in 2015 at the age of 52 andenteredthe shadow cabinetalittle over a year later.

Jeremy Corbyn,then the Labour leader, made Starmer his Brexit chief following the 2016 referendum.

Corbyn is a controversial figure in British politics and serving in his top team is still something that haunts Starmer. Corbyn had historically beenonthe far left of the Labour Party. Prior to becoming leader in 2015, Corbyn had at various points in his long career supported nuclear disarmament,andwithdrawal from NATO, and said it was a “tragedy” that Osama bin Laden was killed rather than put on trial.

Starmer was in Corbyn’s shadow cabinetforthe 2017 and 2019 general elections – something the Conservatives bring up regularly as evidence that he is a threat to national security, having tried twice to make Corbyn prime minister.

Starmer, left, and then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn talk to the media at the EU Commission headquarters on March 21, 2019 in Brussels, Belgium.

However, Starmer has since kicked Corbyn out oftheLabour Party following an investigation intoantisemitismduring Corbyn’s time as leader. Starmerhas also saidthat he supported Corbyn knowing he would lose. Pressed on that point in a BBC “Question Time” program, he said Corbyn “would be a better prime minister” than “what we got” in Boris Johnson. Starmer also arguesthat hehas brought Labour back to a position of electability.

The polls suggest that is true, but critics of Starmer on the left say that he used Corbyn andhis wingof the Labour Party to win the party leadership in 2020 – committing toseveralleft-wing positionssuch asnationalizing public services, scrapping university tuition fees and reversingConservative welfare reforms – only to abandon those pledgesonce he got closer topower.

James Schneider, Corbyn’s former communications chief, told CNN: “Starmer is not a principled man. His campaign to become Labour leader was systemically dishonest. His cynicism and lack of policies to improve people’s lives will lead to a deep disillusionment that could either feed the hard right or a future people’s movement for change.”

Starmer has at various times responded to accusations that he has drifted politically by saying that he puts his country before his political party, and that it’s only possible to change things if you are in power.

Can Starmer change Britain?

Whether you think Starmer’scurrentplan is unambitious, dishonest, or exactly what Britain needs, it’s impossible to push through policy without political and personal capital.

Dominic Grieve, a Conservative politician who served asattorneygeneral while Starmer was DPP, speaks glowingly of this period.

“He ran his department very efficiently and effectively at a really difficult time because his budget had been cut. It was genuinely very impressive,”Grieve told CNN.

Grieveaddedthat Starmer was able to be an effective manager because “he is not bogged down with years of political ideology or baggage. He can see what is wrong and can address it.”

Starmer gives a keynote speech during a visit to Lancing in West Sussex on May 27, 2024, while on the general election campaign trail.

Much as Starmer’s allies might see this as a strength, his opponents, from both sides of politics,see it as a weakness.

To those on the right, Starmer is a man who will say anything to get in power. He is someone whoin their eyeswill supportCorbyn,who is anti-NATO and has repeatedly been accused of being a terroristsympathizer,to get what he wants and is a danger to Britain.

To the left, he is someone who doesn’t have the convictionto make radical changesand, once in office,will not be materially that different to a Conservative leader.

If current polling is accurate, Starmer willwina historic and enormous majority in theHouse of Commons. Butthe future may not be so simple.Giventhe current state of Britain’s finances, the circ*mstances ofLabour’s probablevictory and, even Starmer’s own personality traits, itmight mean he doesn’t have quite the blank checkthat a leader with virtually no oppositionin parliamentwould typically enjoy.

Aninability to turn that parliamentary power into tangible resultsat a time when voters are crying out for something differentcould mean that five years from now, his moderate, safety-first center-left program may ultimately beseen asjust as big a political gamble as any of those the Conservatives took in thepast 14 years.