SIR KEIR STARMER stood for election as Labour leader on the basis of 10 policies. Today, they have been reduced to one:  “I’m not Jeremy Corbyn.”

That has been made clearer than ever by his response to the Ukraine crisis. Starmer has made no positive proposals, and has not even endorsed the diplomatic initiatives taken by leaders who he might be thought closer to, like France’s Macron and Germany’s Scholz.

Instead, he has stoutly supported the government, which has itself been out on a limb in its provocative intransigence around the crisis. Starmer saved his withering fire for the Stop the War Coalition and Jeremy Corbyn.

Nor is he stopping there. Senior Labour sources have briefed that the Labour leader plans to spend the spring dumping Corbyn-era policies, like utility and rail nationalisation, notwithstanding both their popularity and his own previous commitment to them. As to what he will offer instead, there is only silence.

Some may argue: “Well, Corbyn lost heavily in 2019 so why not?” In fact, even in 2019 Labour polled a higher share of the vote than under Miliband in 2015, Brown in 2010, and Kinnock in 1987.  Corbyn never treated Miliband with such disrespect, Brown was succeeded by a politician from his own team and Kinnock remained leader himself for another five years.

No, this is all about Starmer signalling his support for the Establishment and the state — the status quo basically, minus parties at Number 10.

Some say this is refried Blairism. It is worse. Tony Blair had more to say than “I am not Harold Wilson.” 

It is remarkable that with Peter Mandelson as an adviser Starmer has not learned the old Blair dance move called triangulation.

This, older readers will recall, involved Labour doing three things when Blair was leader of the opposition. First, criticise the government’s actions on a given issue. Then denounce the “old Labour” approach to the issue. And finally, announce a “new Labour” policy, purportedly somewhere between the two.

If Starmer is trying to triangulate, he keeps tripping over his own feet. He denounces his predecessor but then … supports the government and offers no alternative of substance. As on the Covid pandemic, so on the new cold war. Not a triangle, nor even a straight line, but a circle that leaves you where you started.

Not being Jeremy Corbyn is obviously perfectly acceptable in an individual, but entirely inadequate as a basis for winning elections, let alone governing. You risk losing the voters who liked Corbyn, without necessarily winning back the Corbyn-haters, who were often actually Labour-haters.

And what if victory was nevertheless secured? A white paper on Government Plans for Not Being Jeremy Corbyn next? It won’t pay the fuel bills, nor keep the trains running. It might, however, make people nostalgic for a Labour leader with something to say.  Jeremy Corbyn, for example.

Earlier Nato generation at least learned from their mistakes

Two names have been constantly invoked by pro-Nato pundits lately. One is Denis Healey, who as the Labour Party’s international secretary in the late 1940s was a leading proponent of the formation of the new military bloc.

The second is George Kennan, the US diplomat who famously composed the “long telegram” in 1946 setting out the strategy of containment against alleged Soviet expansionism. Their names are invoked in support of the present policy towards Russia.

It is therefore worth recalling that Healey, later in life, stated that he believed Soviet intentions had been misread by the West, and that there were never the dangers he imagined in the 1940s.

And Kennan, who lived to the age of 101, strongly opposed the expansion of Nato after the end of the cold war.

Unlike Kennan and Healey, today’s Nato leaders are bent on repeating mistakes rather than learning from them.

US’s long-term strategy in tatters

If Henry Kissinger was in his grave — it seems that the bad don’t die young — he would be spinning in it.

For 60 years, US diplomacy has been focused on dividing Russia from China.

That imperative sent Kissinger to Beijing in the early 1970s to cement an anti-Soviet alliance. Already estranged from Moscow over ideological and strategic issues, Mao Zedong went along.  Doubtless, that helped the US win the cold war.

There have been ebbs and flows since then, but the joint statement issued by Presidents Putin and Xi this month reveals an impressive measure of agreement on world politics, above all in opposition to US hegemony.

Of course, this is not the socialist alliance between the Soviet Union and China of the 1950s. But it is a clear sign that the US-dominated era is passing. When the number two military power and the number two-and-rising economic power are united against you, the writing is on the wall for unipolarity.

President Joe Biden has followed Donald Trump and Barack Obama in challenging China. But by confronting Russia too, he has undone Kissinger’s work. Perhaps it is good after all that he has lived to see it.

...and over at the Mail

Peter Hitchens, a consistent conservative who has stood strong for civil liberties and against wars of aggression, wrote the following in his Mail on Sunday column about the Ukraine crisis: “One of the roots of the Russia-Ukraine problem is, alas, the existence of some very crude and nasty factions of Ukrainian nationalism, many of them unblushing neo-Nazis. Of course there are plenty of perfectly civilised Ukrainian patriots, but bigoted racialist thugs have an influence way beyond their numbers in that country.

“That is why so many Russians living in Ukraine have often felt excluded and have yearned to be ruled instead from Russia.

“And that explains a lot of other things now going on. Ukraine is, in fact, much like Russia in its corruption, political sleaze, oligarchs, dirty money and dodgy politics. It is not especially free and the rule of law is absent ... If we are going to interfere in this very complex problem, then we are going to need to tell each other the truth about it.”

Would that all Conservatives were so insightful, especially those in high office.