Alex Grant

1 It’s the geography, stupid: the nation simply no longer wants a London lawyer at the helm.

Labour has never had a Leader from the north of England since Harold Wilson stepped down as prime minister in 1976. James Callaghan was a Portsmouth man representing a Welsh seat; Foot and Kinnock were sons of Plymouth and south Wales, also representing Welsh seats. John Smith and Gordon Brown were Scotsmen through and through. While Blair and Miliband represented northern seats (and Blair had been spent most of his early years in Durham and Scotland) they were essentially perceived as Londoners. One of Jeremy Corbyn’s many mistakes as Labour leader was to allow himself to be perceived as a Londoner as well (in fact, he was brought up in Shropshire, on the borders of the West Midlands conurbation: an interesting backstory he utterly failed to capitalise on).

The long and the short of it is that no Labour leader has had a recognisably Midland or northern identity, or a northern accent, for more than 50 years.  Despite lots of Labour northerners in senior positions, both in opposition and the in government, the sense of the north being left behind has been reinforced by a succession of leaders who come from down south. Starmer’s woodenness, and his  maddeningly over-heated mantras about being the son of (Surrey) toolmaker, did nothing to correct this impression. As just about every account of the Makerfield by-election campaign has told us, Starmer is not just distrusted or misunderstood by northern voters: he is actively hated. Likewise in large parts of the Midlands, Wales, and Scotland, where Labour’s results in May were even worse than in the North.

2 Style matters just as much as substance. It always has. Starmer was simply a hopeless communicator from the word go

Picture Keir Starmer in your mind’s eye. It’s impossible to see him in any guise other than wearing either a navy-blue or crisp white shirt (normally with a tailored suit, but occasionally with a hi-vis jacket and hard hat on a factory visit), standing like a statue behind a lectern, flanked by Union Jacks. His strangely immovable coiffure sits above a pair of eyes that betray no emotion other than nervousness. Starmer was, and always will be, a decent man who gives passable set-piece speeches, but he is simply woeful at human interactions with strangers. Other Labour prime ministers – Brown comes to mind – countered these personal weaknesses with good political communications: clear policies explained in palatable soundbites. It is difficult to think of a single political soundbite of the last two years that will linger in the memory. It has just been one managerial message after another.

As Jonathan Hinder, Labour MP for Pendle and Clitheroe, told The Times frankly a few days ago, “The sense you pick up from conversations with voters is that Keir simultaneously doesn’t stand for anything and yet is incredibly sanctimonious, his style embodying the HR proceduralism that people can’t stand from their workplace.” One of the tragedies of his premiership is that, much like like Theresa May, the very first time Starmer showed any genuine emotion was at the very end of his resignation speech. There are many reasons for Starmer’s demise, but is it trite to say that his lack of emotional intelligence was a large one?

3 Britain does not like U-turns. Starmer should have stuck to his guns on inheritance tax, welfare reform and winter fuel payments

Labour communications problems have been inextricably linked to policy ones. Any government needs to have a clear story to tell. For this Labour one it should have been a clear story of economic stability, ethical integrity, and national renewal. In nearly two years it only clearly articulated the first of those three things. On the economy, stagnant growth, an ongoing crisis in the cost of living, and a lack of clarity about what economic growth is for blunted the modest successes, such as growth being not quite as bad as other G7 nations. Even right-wing government like Thatcher’s didn’t just present economic growth as an end in itself. Instead, Thatcher saw economic growth as a means to an an end: a path to greater individual freedom, and responsibility. How ironic that a Labour government, elected with a huge majority 35 years after her demise, could fail to articulate the kind of society that a strong economy could bring about.