Keir Starmer’s challenge is to enhance our quality of life – as his Labour predecessors did

In advising Keir Starmer many on the Left point to the same level of changes being required that Clement Attlee introduced in his post war governments. They have a point.

On the face of it Attlee seems “radical” but he did not ride headlong into public ownership, or anything else. The feeling that postwar society had to change was fairly universal – it was not really a “Socialism v Capitalism” battle. The new Education and Healthcare models were less about the failure of the private sector and more about fairness. Yes there was an ideological underpinning but Clem was no Marxist!

Attlee is the perfect model for Starmer and he seems to be following his example. But much of the social structures we have now will stay in place. We will remain a mixed economy. Where he does need to be more radical, the unraveling of the grotesque private sector monopolies like water and much public transport, he will I think.

The Conservatives have leadership candidates who have publicly eschewed the mixed economy. Their worship of Thatcherism ignores the disaster that some, not by any means all, of her changes were. The private sector monopolies she created have universally failed – the pollution in our lakes, rivers and beaches an all to visible example.

Attlee’s government had to be governed by the need for efficiency and at a macroeconomic level by financial probity – hence austerity. Later Harold Wilson’s government is most noted for social reforms introduced by that great social reforming Home Secretary Roy Jenkins. Tories might not like this truth but it is post war Labour governments – Attlee, Wilson, Blair that changed our quality of life for the better! That’s Keir Starmer’s challenge as well.