Speaking Starmer

By Edward Emerson, Senior Consultant

This week saw Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer finish his efforts to elaborate upon the five national missions he set out at the start of the year, stating his belief that “Britain needs a clearer sense of purpose”. 

The missions, to secure the highest sustained growth in the G7, to make Britain a clean energy superpower, to build an NHS fit for the future, to make Britain’s streets safe and to break down barriers to opportunity at every stage, have proven a useful structure on which to hang Labour policy on, and structure the rest of the party’s announcements around. 

Each mission has been launched by a keynote speech from Starmer on a tour that finished this week with an address in Gillingham on opportunity and Labour’s early years education policy. Starmer is not a noted or renowned orator, but what might his rhetoric tell us about him as a potential Prime Minister, or even what a Starmer election campaign could look like? 

Starmer is sometimes compared to Labour’s previous centrist powerhouse, and while it is hardly controversial to note that Starmer is no Tony Blair, the pair don’t just differ in style, but in substance too.

Starmer is perhaps too grounded in the UK’s current economic realities to offer a repeat of Blair’s aspirational offering. What’s more, he wants us to know this. Ambition (15 mentions), believe (17), become (8), and beyond (8) hardly feature in his speeches. Instead, these focus on the importance of jobs (41), working (101), the NHS (62), and of course, Starmer’s focus on his own purpose, his missions (54). More than anything else though, Starmer wants to talk about me and you, the people (112). 

We are Starmer’s favourite topic when discussing his missions. He mentions growth that “makes people better off” through higher living standards. When it comes to crime, it is “working people” who pay the price of poor policing. When it comes to the NHS, the Tories have in Starmer’s eyes “underestimated the bond between people and service”, and by tackling high energy bills Starmer can once again “make this country work for working people”. The final mission will, Starmer says, “tear down the barriers to opportunity that hold this country and its people back”. 

It is possible to read too much into this, but running with it for a moment, what could this brief snapshot into Starmer’s speechcraft tell us about a future election campaign or even a future Government with Starmer at its head? 

The thread that runs through Starmer’s speeches is a commitment to dealing with realities as they are, using the hands we have been dealt, and with heavy references to what he views as the certainties in life. Community (57) and Britain (74) are referenced throughout. Country (60) and Government (62) are cited much more frequently than party (20) or politics (20). 

Robert Shrimsley has written compellingly about the possibility that the next general election will come to be defined by an absence of hope on offer from both major parties, concluding that entrenched fatalism may hurt Labour’s chances as an apathetic public ultimately concludes that both parties are unable to provide the vision needed to tackle the UK’s challenges.

Starmer is not against mentioning hope (17), and has spoken eloquently on the subject in the past, but in the missions he has set out, he is more interested in references to service (38), security (29), and above all, he is a big believer in the importance of having the right plan (41). Perhaps that plan includes a conscious decision to avoid promising too much too far out from an election, but as Shrimsley concludes, “voters need at least one of the major parties to offer a sense of direction to a nation that has stalled, even if the journey is hard. The rewards could be huge. For Labour especially, being a convincing voice of hope is probably the difference between winning outright or falling short”. 

Starmer has a laser focus on us, his target voters, and he wants us to know this. He wants us to feel seen whenever he speaks, but despite claiming that Britain needs a stronger sense of purpose, it’s still unclear where he wants us to be looking.