Five years ago this week, Keir Starmer was elected leader of the Labour Party with a resounding if ill-defined mandate.
Of the 275,780 members Starmer prevailed upon, distinct sections identified with politically exclusive attributes. Some saw the shadow Brexit secretary as offering “Corbynism in a suit” — aesthetically palatable socialism adherent to the advice offered by David Cameron’s mother in 2016.
Others related to Starmer’s “unity” spiel and authentic disdain for the factional conflict that characterised the Corbyn years.
A still smaller section, led by Starmer’s campaign manager, assessed the situation rather differently. In 2020, Morgan McSweeney set his master plan in motion: Starmer would court grassroots sentiment before pivoting definitely towards the centre ground. In consecutive steps separated by years, the now-PM would appeal to the progressive activist and the median voter: a winning combination.
First though, after assuming the Labour leadership with 56.2 per cent of the membership vote, Starmer constructed a shadow cabinet in the image of his muddled mandate. Rebecca Long-Bailey, the vanquished heir to the Corbynite throne, emerged as shadow education secretary. Posts like shadow minister for voter engagement and youth affairs were retained from the ancien régime. All things considered, Starmer could hardly have signalled a subtler rupture with the past.
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There exist several methodologies for measuring the vast ideological distance Starmer has covered since 2020. For all the half-truths and reneged-upon commitments he levelled at the Labour membership, Starmer’s campaign slogan — “Another future is possible” — has proved prescient.
Broadly, the prime minister’s political journey is best expressed by the inexorable deconstruction of his first shadow cabinet. Long-Bailey was swiftly defenestrated; the voter engagement and youth affairs brief was eventually expunged. But of all the Labour politicians Starmer has marginalised and rendered irrelevant since 2020, few career trajectories read so instructively as that of Anneliese Dodds, his first shadow chancellor.
Back in 2020, Dodds’ appointment was warmly welcomed by those politicians Starmer now routinely displeases. John McDonnell described his successor as shadow chancellor as “superb” and “conscientious in all she does” — citing her work in his shadow Treasury team.
From 2020-2021, Dodds — leading a team featuring Pat McFadden and Wes Streeting — duelled with Rishi Sunak across the despatch boxes. In an empty chamber, the Covid chancellor’s prominence and popularity made him a difficult target. The prevailing narrative noted Sunak’s “dishy” profile and Dodds’ inability to “cut through”. The shadow chancellor’s most enthusiastic critics denounced her as “anonymous”.
Dodds was the most senior victim of Starmer’s first reshuffle — a development that triggered little surprise or consternation. From 2021-2024, she served loyally as Labour chair and shadow secretary of state for women and equalities. (In this latter capacity, Dodds shadowed her second future Tory leader: Kemi Badenoch).
However, Dodds did not retain these briefs in government. A relatively intricate rearrangement of Starmer’s middle-ranking ministers saw Dodds shuffled, downwards again, into the Foreign Office. She attended cabinet as international development minister. But she did not become a secretary of state, serving simultaneously as a minister in the equalities department.
Dodds lasted eight months in these posts, before resigning over No 10’s cuts to the foreign aid budget. Her resignation letter — deferred to avoid distracting from Starmer’s stateside visit — referenced to the abrupt nature of the announcement. Published to social media on 28 February, the missive reads: “I am only writing to you now that your meeting with president Trump is over, and four days after you informed me of your decision to cut Overseas Development Assistance to 0.3 per cent of GNI [emphasis mine].”
Starmer unveiled the cut three days prior on 25 February. So Dodds was given no more than 24 hours advance notice of the decision.
And lo, Dodds’ journey from shadow chancellor to backbencher — after four years, two demotions and a resignation — was complete.
Logistically, it was a loyal resignation. But her corresponding missive cast a wide net with its sharp objections to the government’s strategy. In a memorable aside, Dodds noted her unfulfilled expectation that ministers would “discuss our fiscal rules and approach to taxation” in the wake of geopolitical developments. She predicted that the defence spending uplift will need to go further. As such, “tactical cuts” — like those directed at the foreign aid budget — would not suffice.
But the Labour MP’s letter of resignation was overshadowed by its subject matter. Mere hours after Westminster registered the “soft left” warning shot, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy wandered innocently into the White House, springing Donald Trump’s trap.
Dodds’ resignation could not compete with this latest epoch-defining development.
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From shadow chancellor to party chair to where?
On Thursday, less than 24 hours after Trump declared trade “liberation”, Dodds “broke her silence” in a House of Commons debate on the impact of digital platforms on UK democracy.
It marked the Labour MP’s first contribution as a backbencher since 2017, following an unbroken eight-year stint on the frontbench. (Dodds entered parliament on 8 June 2017 and was promoted a mere 25 days later; in that time, she managed just two commons contributions in the form of two questions).
The view is “much better from here”, Dodds began, evoking Robin Cook — a potentially portentous reference for a former minister. In any case, Dodds picked up from where her resignation letter left off.
“The new government entered office at a time of unprecedented geopolitical and economic flux”, she told the House. “There is no muscle memory in government, or indeed in politics, for the instability we are currently seeing, and as democracy backslides globally, instability is the new normal.”
She segued into the speech’s central theme: “It demands a strategic, not tactical, response.”
Dodds’ resignation letter had deployed a similar turn of phrase. Writing in February, she denounced “tactical cuts to public spending” and the diminution of the foreign aid budget specifically. “These are unprecedented times”, she added, “when strategic decisions for the sake of our country’s security cannot be ducked.”
Dodds’ insinuation is that recent interventions do not reflect an overarching programme for government, but reactive responses that are liable to be overtaken by the very events they profess to respond to.
So what does Dodds mean by a “strategic” approach? “Economically”, the Labour backbencher told the commons on Thursday, “I believe… that we must be prepared to reassess shibboleths, whether on the fiscal rules, as Germany has done, or on taxation, especially when the very best-off are seeing so little impact on their wellbeing from the economic headwinds.”
The use of “shibboleths” here is intriguing — given Starmer’s tenure as Labour leader has regularly brought him into conflict with ideological axioms. (His positions on welfare and foreign aid inspired a further deluge of such commentary). Across her commons speech and resignation letter, it is notable that Dodds’ arguments reflect the rhetoric adopted by No 10 almost exactly. The world is changing, she attests, as if she were still on the ministerial payroll.
But Dodds and Starmer draw divergent conclusions from the same diagnosis. At the spring statement, No 10 embraced the incumbent fiscal framework — turning on progressive shibboleths to appease its self-imposed ordinances. Dodds has called for a more radical reworking of the government’s financial position.
She continued on Thursday: “In addition, we must work with our allies — particularly in Europe but also beyond — to build our resilience on defence production and exports, with productivity growth hammered by post-Brexit impediments to trade and now, as we have heard this morning, with US-imposed tariffs.
“From Turkey to Somalia, people are desperate for democracy, stability and economic growth. In supporting them, we also support our country’s security.”
The foreign aid cut is self-defeating and short-termist, Dodds maintained: an easy answer to the difficult questions our changing world begs.
In this vein, she turned to the subject of the debate: digital threats to democracy. “I believe that we need the same strategic approach — not tactical — when it comes to the protection of our democracy”, Dodds insisted.
She referenced the summer riots and the “appalling scenes when racist thugs set fire to hotels knowing that people remained inside”. She praised the swift policing and criminal justice response, but regretted the government’s apparent inertia. “There are many other canaries choking down the coalmine, not least due to the growth and impact of violent online misogyny”, she remarked.
“Policy must deal not with how things were 10 years ago, but with the reality of an online world that is having huge offline consequences.”
(Dodds went on to raise four policy suggestions, most of which relate to the regulatory framework established by the Online Safety Act).
Soft left out
In whatever capacity she has served in recent years, Dodds has always been associated with Labour’s “soft left” — the mushy mainstream of party opinion (and thus lobby fodder for frontbenches positioned to its ideological right or left).
There exists a less objective, less favourable characterisation. The soft left (or “open left”) is ridiculed by its intra-party critics as politically invertebrate: a nominal faction that — rather like the one-nation pushovers in the Conservative fold — takes far from enthusiastically to factionalism. Soft by name and soft by nature.
From 2015-c.2024, the informal collective struggled for purpose in the dichotomous cold war that raged between left and right. That said, proponents of Labour’s squeezed middle have served, and still serve, on Starmer’s frontbench. But they have also been slowly marginalised since 2020 — enfeebled if not entirely enervated.
The Labour wets once claimed Starmer as their own. But the faction has fared poorly in recent months. Indeed, both of Starmer’s cabinet resignations — Dodds and Louise Haigh — are associated with the soft left tradition. In their wake, have risen ministers more obviously aligned with No 10’s political vision.
Starmer is a risk-taking leader — particularly in and around his own party. But contained within every “ruthless” gamble has rested the historically reasonable assumption that the soft left will either assent to his chosen course, or begrudgingly acquiesce.
But even the stretchy and amenable soft left has an elastic limit.
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A hard-edged soft left?
The median Labour MP, all else being equal, would no doubt identify with the positions outlined in Dodds’ post-resignation interventions. The average parliamentarian, of whatever party, did not get into politics to serve as a faithful custodian of arbitrary fiscal rules. Dodds’ call for a “strategic left” and comments on the state of British democracy are similarly prescient.
And yet — all else is not equal. The incentive structure of Westminster rewards loyalty. For a new Labour MP, to speak up now would be to surrender any chance of career progression under Starmer.
But this position cannot hold forever. And all indicators suggest the Starmer project is in peril.
New polling for PLMR, conducted by Electoral Calculus, points to a three-way split between Reform UK, the Conservatives and Labour — the prevailing consensus established by successive surveys. Perhaps more pertinently, PLMR’s research suggests Starmer and Nigel Farage are tied (at 16 per cent) on the question of which party leader is most trusted to represent the UK on the international stage. That finding is cause for considerable concern in No 10.
Meanwhile, Survation’s monthly polling of the Labour membership continues to cast doubt over the longevity of the Starmer project. According to the LabourList’s league table, those ministers most favoured by No 10, (Liz Kendall, Rachel Reeves, Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer himself), have seen their approval ratings plummet in recent time. Even at this early stage, it seems unlikely that the Labour membership — if given the opportunity to vote in a future leadership contest — would back a continuity candidate.
And what of the local elections? Labour’s first major interaction with the electorate since entering government could be punishing indeed. Perhaps then things might look a little more equal. (At some point, of course, the 2024 intake will realise there is not enough room for them all in cabinet — or time for them to get there).
Rishi Sunak’s premiership, as ever, teaches an exigent lesson: backbench antagonism and electoral comeuppance are two sides of the same coin. Their interdependence manifests as vicious or virtuous cycles: electoral progress alleviates tension; while defeats exacerbate factional discontent. It’s an iron law that Starmer is very much subject to.
Now, this is not to say that the Parliamentary Labour Party is about to reorganise itself into “five families” and begin manoeuvring against Starmer. For what it is worth, the aforementioned political doom loop — which so dominated Sunak’s premiership — will prove less punishing at this stage in the electoral cycle.
But Anneliese Dodds’ interventions point to a fork in the road. At the very least, a coherent political position — shaped by the unique moment — has been established from which hitherto nervous critics can begin to make representations. The soft left, coarsened by Starmer’s missteps, might finally lay a finger on the itinerant Overton window. US tariffs and the further diminution of Reeves’ fiscal headroom will reinforce the salience of Dodds’ assessment over time.
All of a sudden then, Starmer’s intra-party critics appear less amorphous: a fact his political operation has always taken for granted and ruthlessly exploited.
The prime minister could learn to fear a hard-edged soft left.
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.
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