Keir Starmer presents as the antithesis of Boris Johnson, and is all the more welcome for that. In 1945 Clement Attlee was a bit of a dullard too. Each offered serious ‘change’ in Britain’s domestic politics, after a turbulent period of history; but whether the more recent period was quite turbulent enough to enable a revolution on Attlee’s post-War scale may be doubted.
Labour after all won only 9,708,716 votes in the recent election, or 33.7% of those who voted. That contrasts with 11,967,746 and 48% for Attlee’s government in 1945. More significantly, perhaps, the popular Labour vote back in 2019 – when the much maligned Corbyn was leader – was 10,295,907: which was significantly higher than Starmer’s last month. Which suggests that the latter’s decorbynisation of his party may have been less significant a factor in Labour’s win than he has been claiming, including in his (rather good, I thought) Conference speech today. Obviously detestation of the Tories was a bigger, if negative, factor. That was emphatically not true in Attlee’s case. People then voted for his programme. And back in 1945 he had Winston Churchill to defeat; a rather more formidable opponent than poor Rishi, or than any of the other inadequacies squabbling for his crown today.
Porter’s Pensées 
The Attlee-Starmer comparison is an interesting one.
Jeremy Corbyn makes a neat counterpart to George Lansbury.
I can hardly imagine Attlee treating benefit claimants the same way as Starmer.
Nor can I imagine Starmer adopting Attlee’s views on national identity and migration: “we want to put in the statute book an act which will make our people citizens of the world before they are citizens of this country.”
I can imagine them having an interesting conversation over Israel/Palestine. [Perhaps the most striking speech yesterday was made by President Erdogan.]
I desperately hope that Starmer never has to deal with a US President contemplating the use of nuclear weapons, but in today’s world that isn’t beyond imagining.
As you have remarked yourself on the blog, historical “lessons” are often misleading, the analogies being chosen to order. But I certainly think Starmer would echo the gist of Attlee’s “You will be judged by what you succeed at gentlemen, not by what you attempt.”
I think you are a bit harsh on Attlee’s intellect – he may have been dull, but he was no dullard.
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Forgot the link.
Did Labour win by losing votes?
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Labour’s vote was down on 2019 in about half the constituencies in England, including four fifths of the seats they held and about a third of the seats they gained. (And 2019 was a historic failure, the worst result since 1935, etc, etc.)
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Labour’s vote was down on 2019 in about half the constituencies in England, including four fifths of the seats they held and about a third of the seats they gained. (And 2019 was a historic failure, the worst result since 1935, etc, etc.)
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Labour received 34% of the vote on a very low turnout, less than Corbyn’s 40% in 2017, which is about 24% of the electorate, hardly a mandate for change and the ‘changes’ were not made clear before the election. It shows a disillusionment with politicians of all parties, not helped surely by Labours behaviour in office so far.
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