Labour don't lack policy, but we still don’t know what Sir Keir Starmer wants - Alexander Brown

The Labour party are ahead in the polls and on course for Government, but questions remain as to what this will actually look like.

What is the point of the Labour party? This is the question now performatively asked by every SNP figure over each policy quibble or U-turn, as they seek to portray themselves as the progressive alternative, away from their record on health and schools anyway.

But behind the critique lies a real question – what is it exactly Sir Keir Starmer hopes to achieve in Government? What is he in all of this for? Slogans are a blunt, but necessary aspect of British politics and, despite numerous attempts at a rebrand, the Labour leader is yet to come up with one that fits. The Tories had Get Brexit done, the SNP want independence, but Labour’s platform remains unclear to the wider public.

Polling shows the public like Sir Keir, but are unsure what his priorities are – a view felt by many of his own MPs. Polling also show across the UK traditional Tory and SNP voters will be abandoning them for Labour, but they also make clear this is more about objecting to their former favourites, rather than because of Sir Keir’s leadership.

This is perhaps in part due to what some feel is an opportunism about the Labour leader, who has made a history of advocating one thing, then changing tact to another. This week it was a workers’ rights charter, which will now be a consultation, rather than policy. Before that it was abandoning a promise to keep public services in public hands, supporting then opposing freedom of movement, opposing then maintaining tuition fees, £28 billion a year for the “green prosperity plan” that became £28bn eventually, opposing the two-child benefit cap then refusing to end it.

There is no doubt in isolation, let alone as a collective, that so many U-turns raise questions. Sir Keir’s defence is that difficult choices need to be made to win elections and, in turn, govern. Shadow ministers explain a mess will be left for them by the Tory party, and they can’t risk another mini-budget disaster. For some that will be enough. Labour has been out of power since the years of Tony Blair and flexibility is required to change that.

What’s more, this was all avoidable, Labour has enough policy to convey its progressive credentials, they’ve just been distracted from or deemed at risk due to the numerous compromises. There are promises of billions in green investment, the largest NHS workforce plan in history, ending tax breaks for private schools to raise £1.5bn, a new, publicly-owned clean energy company and abolishing non-dom tax status. These are radical policies in fitting with Labour’s history, but have been drowned out by a party more worried about looking like it’s spending money than looking like it has policies.

Sir Keir has admirably turned the party’s fortunes around, taking them from their lowest electoral result in a century to the brink of power. But there is work to do to show what exactly that means, and what, exactly, is the point of Labour.