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One of Starmer’s favourite economists is Prof Mariana Mazzucato, the founding director of University College London’s Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose. The Labour leader has written of her influence on his thinking, through books including The Entrepreneurial State and Mission Economy. But she is among the experts concerned about the party’s cautious approach to tackling years of “misery” caused by Tory austerity.
Speaking with me recently, Mazzucato underlined: “I really respect Keir Starmer… I hope Labour wins the election because we’re in such a mess.” She added: “I do believe in fiscal responsibility, because if you crash your economy, there’s nothing you can do and you definitely won’t win the next election.”
Nevertheless, she told i: “I worry that the fear of looking fiscally irresponsible, because we’re entering an election year, is resulting in timid policies, U-turning, and not supporting the basic stuff that’s going to reduce poverty… You don’t succeed by saying, ‘We’re going to invest a bit’, and then taking the money away. You do it by being bold.”
Mazzucato worries that Labour’s insistence that “they’re going to tighten the belts” is leaving it with no room for manoeuvre if Starmer enters Downing Street. “How do you just toss aside four years of this ideology?” This message “isn’t a good look” because it “comes from a deep insecurity”, she argued. “What’s much more important is to say what you stand for. What is Labour’s stance on making sure that working people have better lives?”
Byrne supports Labour’s current approach, endorsing the fundamental need to convince the public they are responsible and secure trust before anything else. “The priority right now is winning power,” he says. “Are they heading in the right direction? Yes, absolutely.”
He is confident the party leadership has one or two more exciting policies ready to unveil in its manifesto, fresh and too late to be stolen, to ensure supporters turn out.
“They have got some distance still to go in translating the big missions into an offer that it’s easy to explain on a doorstep,” he says. “People are not paying a lot of attention to politics right now, life is just so tough… But as the choice comes into focus, people will switch on – and that is the moment where you’ve got to have some real cut-through policies that will really help give people a sense that a change of direction is on offer. People don’t want more of the same.”
He thinks it’s also important to signal longer-term ambitions – of what could be achieved in the next decade. “Once you’ve got power, you need a purpose and you need a direction… You’ve got to use that power to change the way our country works. That was one of the big lessons I took away from the New Labour years,” he says.
“We’ve got to show that change is possible. Keir is right to talk about how apathy is one of the biggest risks for Labour, because people are so demoralised now that they think progress is impossible.”
His programme for reform “is deliberately written as a project for a three-term government,” he explains. “This is not a book I would recommend you boil down to a pledge card for the next election.”
If Starmer were to not only become prime minister but last as long as Blair, Byrne hopes that more radical ideas will become increasingly palatable for party and nation alike.
“Almost every single one of the ideas in this book has been tried and tested somewhere. This is not fantasy-land politics. They are options that couldn’t be delivered overnight by any government – but over the course of a three-term Labour government, they could win Britain’s vote, and they would definitely change Britain’s future.”