Unbranded Politics

The two main parties in British politics used to be clearly branded. Labour was for the downtrodden working class needing education, healthcare and protection against exploitation and hard times. Conservatives were for tradition, sound money, professions, possessions and the benefits of enterprise.

This fairly well-defined branding has gone, to be replaced by a few tattered old labels still being squeezed and squeezed again for whatever extractable residue they have left. Cheap politics is all we now have on offer. Unbranded, shoddily put together with odds and ends sourced from beyond our shores, ephemerally fashionable, disposable and impossible to repair.

A game selects the players able and willing to play it. It is striking how little mainstream political pundits have to say about Keir Starmer’s political principles and policies. He doesn’t appear to have either, which is no surprise. He clearly plays the modern political game, the unbranded version where he tailors his message to his audience while saying as little as possible. This is how the game is now played.

It is not even obvious that Starmer has any principles which led him into politics, other than some bloodless attraction to the rules of the political game, the first rule of which to have no principles because principles are weaknesses.

This avoidance of political weaknesses seems to be the key to Starmer’s playing style. It is still possible to impress the party faithful with principles, but the party is a mix of lesser players and supporters loosely grouped into factions playing internal games among themselves. To cope with this, Starmer plays the political game with a curious, cynical professionalism which deceives only the terminally gullible.

His style is based on solid defence combined with opportunist strikes at perceived weaknesses in the opponents’ tactics. The fundamental defence tactic is to present opponents and pundits with as little as possible which requires defending – so no firm principles and no firm policies. A secondary defence is to make it clear that he cannot be pinned down to specifics as he is prepared to repudiate anything at a later date.

It is not a complex nor a difficult style in itself but it has the advantage that Starmer is sufficiently uncharismatic to create the impression that he might be sincere. He isn’t at all sincere because this is not how he plays the game, but a lack of charisma helps obscure it.

Running counter to this advantage is that Starmer’s lack of charisma makes it more difficult to hide his lack of political principles. This seems to be a weakness. Not a weakness which is easily attacked politically, but one which is not easily hidden even in the fog of political warfare.