Three points in favour of Starmer, which I am not sure have been picked up widely. (Two clarifications: I haven’t decided who to vote for; and though I came across him at @OxUniLabour and am in the profession that he was in for years, I don’t know him personally.)
1. A challenge that will certainly face the new Labour leader is dealing with the EHRC inquiry.
(a) It will help to have as LOTO someone who knows the law and how the process works.
(NB - the key to responding to an investigation that reveals - to use as bland a term as possible - a systemic problem in dealing with complaints, is not to quibble at details (which misses the point) but to overhaul structures and personnel.)
(b) Worth remembering here that the Crown Prosecution Service in the 1990s/2000s had a long series of high profile complaints about sex and race discrimination. As head of the CPS, Starmer will have had to manage structures and processes to stop and address problems in that area.
So he actually has management experience of running a large organisation with a history of problems that aren’t the same as, but are not a million miles away from, the Labour Party’s current problems.
2. A challenge that is very likely to face the LOTO is responding to the sort of cock-up and crisis that even a careful and competent PM mishandles. I have a vivid memory of the critical debate in the Westland saga (see theguardian.com/politics/2015/…).
Thatcher was very lucky to get away with it in the critical debate. And part of the reason she did is that Kinnock lost the plot: he simply wasn’t forensic enough, and started waffling. Even though it was on the radio, you could almost hear her relaxing. She’d got away with it.
A reasonably safe prediction: Johnson (a less careful and competent character than Thatcher) will sail too close to the wind on something. Or there will be a gross cock-up. And Starmer has the forensic skills to find the killer point.
3. In his video Starmer slightly slides over his role as DPP (someone says she was surprised he took the job, and we are then reminded of prosecutions of the Murdoch press and expense-fiddling MPs).
But DPP is a very big government job. There are serious management issues (see above). And the DPP is at the centre of all sorts of Whitehall crises, on a number of fronts: the job requires you to keep your cool in a s*tstorm, hold on to principle, but to apply some common sense.
Does that remind you of another big government job?
And Starmer is in the almost magical position of having held (with distinction) a big government job but not having any political responsibility for the governments at the time.
And (again - for obvious reasons given its target audience) another aspect of the job not stressed here is that it defuses what would otherwise be an obvious criticism of a left wing human rights lawyer.
That’s the “bleeding heart liberal, always talking about the criminal’s rights and never the victim” attack. But Starmer can with force point out that he has fought hard for the State as protector of the minnow against the pike (as well as against the State in oppressive mode).
Final note: there are all sorts of other things to think about. Policy direction (not talked about here). Ability to persuade voters, especially on traditionally tricky issues for Labour with many voters (immigration/crime). So I haven’t made up my mind.
But I thought the above points were all worth making, as I’m not sure they have been picked up and they seem to me to be important.
