Starmer's striking unpopularity, and a lesson

This past week has seen publication of Starmer’s popularity ratings that, by comparison with the (downward) trajectories of the ratings of previous new PMs, show he has become staggeringly unpopular in an unprecedently short time.  We’ve noted before that Machiavelli advocated the new Prince carry out his unpleasant measures very early in his new regime; and also that the Prince should prefer being feared to being loved.

OK: but he didn’t say it’s a great thing to be deeply unpopular per se, never mind being thought of in terms of the specific negative attributes with which Starmer is increasingly associated – ask any pensioner of your acquaintance.  Is Starmer playing with fire here (assuming he’s broadly in control of his actions)?  Mainstream commentary tends to reckon he’s gone beyond setting expectations & establishing the smack of firm government, and is maybe even undermining the economy by the negativity of his early decision-making and his strident, stern messaging.

Here’s a personal anecdote which isn’t on a precise parallel, but it has a lesson of sorts that might have some bearing.  At the age of 19, I took command of my first troop of soldiers in the army – a scary business: there were 45 of them and my sheltered, essentially middle class upbringing[1] hadn’t exposed me to the rigours of tough working-class mores where disagreements are settled with fist and boot, and the sense of ‘fairness’ (what soldiers consider fairness, anyhow) is never to be trifled with.  

On my very first day, I ran into a couple of ‘Spanish practices’ among the men that seemed to me intolerable, and I told the individuals involved – just a couple or three in each case – to desist immediately, and not to do it again.  Later in the week I inspected their lines (the accommodation of those of the men who lived in barracks – by far the greater number); and as well as marvelling at how in very communal circumstances (8 to a room) they fiercely guarded their personal privacy and possessions, I couldn’t help but notice the ‘Morale Chart’ on the wall in the corridor: a rather neatly-drawn graph with daily entries.  With some surprise I noted that on the very day of my arrival, a huge up-tick had been registered! – and yet the only two things I’d done on that first day were the two bollockings I’d administered.

I short while later, I asked one of the more mature corporals what I was to make of this.  Oh, he said, it was great!  Straight off the bat, you locked up a couple of the blokes who were out of order! [I hadn't in fact issued any punishment, still less locked anyone up.]  Things had got much too slack around here!

There could be so many lessons to draw from this silly little incident[2], but the one that seems relevant here is that a couple of early “smacks of firm government” can – in some instances – actually improve morale as opposed to sapping it.  I’m not suggesting the parallels are exact: but I am saying that given how his own smacks have gone down, along with his general demeanour in government, Starmer shouldn’t be remotely complacent about his own impact on the mood of the nation.

More popcorn, please, as we watch how this plays out.

ND       

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[1] My father left school at 14 to become an apprentice, and was conscripted as a private soldier.  But he commissioned from the ranks and despite some of his war-stories from the working classes, he’d firmly left all that behind; and my own upbringing could only be described as middle class.  Dealing with the soldiery was a big shock for me.

[2]  Another, rather more philosophical, is what I take to be the great theme of Hilary Mantel’s superb Wolf Hall trilogy: that the received version of history is often not particularly accurate, even if (hopefully, sometimes) it captures some of the essence of what actually happened.  This categorically includes even very recent and very trivial ‘history’, e.g. ‘what happened yesterday’, as the case of Cromwell sleeping with the (woman) hotel-keeper when on his mission to parlay with Catherine of Aragon: the story of this minor event has already become currency – in a distorted version – back at his own house, even before he arrives home a day or so later.