Will Keir Starmer be leftist enough to bring the UK back to prosperity and social justice?

In a recent interview, the famous English director Ken Loach, stated that "Keir Starmer is just an opportunist. He turned Labour into a right-wing party. To win the elections, he distorted the left. He reassured the wealthy classes and the City. Thus, he became the darling of the mainstream media. But now, no one represents people experiencing poverty anymore. He's a charmless Tony Blair."

Kean Loach speaks as a member of the so-called hard-left of the Labour party that Starmer ousted after the 2019 election defeat, now led by Jeremy Corbyn. At that election, Labour's vote share fell to 32%, a loss of 60 seats, leaving the party with 202 seats, its lowest number since the 1935 general election.

This was Labour's consensus when, in 2020, Keir Starmer was elected party leader.

Four years later, in the general elections in the United Kingdom on 4 July 2024 for the renewal of the House of Commons, the revolt of the lower classes and the lower middle class, disgusted by the policies of the Tories and their numerous scandals, gave Labour a landslide victory. The party has regained votes in what was once the Red Wall of Northern England, a former industrialised area with a working-class majority now one of the poorest in the United Kingdom. It has severely eroded the SPN's electoral base in Scotland, too.

The main question is whether Keir Starmer will implement enough left policy to bring back the UK to prosperity and social justice.

The new challenge awaiting the new prime minister is to manage the long tail of the after-effects left by Brexit, such as the consequences on public finances, which are increasingly tight, and on economic growth, which is struggling to get going.

Restoring relations, especially commercial ones, with the European Union will also be a priority for the new Government. Furthermore, he must defuse the problem, a consequence of Brexit, of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which could sabotage the historic Good Friday agreement and end the religious war in Northern Ireland. Starmer fought for a long time, in the past, for a second referendum on the United Kingdom's exit from the EU. Still, now he seems to have chosen the line of prudence, declaring that the referendum's outcome must be respected and that, while seeking closer and more peaceful relations with the EU, he will not intend to return to the Customs Union or the Single Market.

Then there is the issue of safety. The new prime minister announced that he would reaffirm his commitment to a "triple nuclear deterrent" and reiterated his ambition to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), thus making defence his priority. Starmer said: "National security will always come first in the new Labour Party I lead. Keeping our country safe is the foundation of the stability the British people rightly expect from their Government."

The Labour leader presented the main points of his program, including the creation and redistribution of wealth, aiming to improve the living standards of workers, the 5% increase in the tax rate on the highest incomes, the strengthening of the healthcare public sector, the abolition of laws restricting strikes, the abolition of the House of Lords, the abolition of fiscal loopholes that allow favourable taxation for private equity funds. Also on the agenda is the creation of a new Border and Security Command, with an initial budget of ￡75 million and with similar powers to counter-terrorism to combating illegal immigration and human trafficking.

In foreign policy, he defines himself as a faithful Atlanticist, assures that the support given to Kyiv in recent years will continue and confirms unconditional support for Israel; he also removes doubts of anti-Semitism when Labour was led by Corbyn.

He was able to reaffirm his pro-Atlantic foreign policy after a harsh purge of the left wing that had been led by Corbyn. The latter left the party but had an evident electoral success, being elected as an independent together with 5 other ex-MPs purged by Starmer.

It's just one area where Starmer has shown a notable amount of pragmatism.

Trade unions and environmentalists criticised his recent backtracking on a pledge to fund ￡28 billion (€33 billion) of green investment a year, a U-turn he said was necessary to make ends meet.

Implementing the most "socialist" parts of the program will be the new prime minister's most challenging task. What policies he will be able to implement needs to be clarified.

The historic Labour economic recipes based on the rise in progressive taxation, the increase of public spending in deficit-financed and the nationalisation of strategic companies for the country's economy are no longer feasible. The public debt went from 70% to 100% under the Tories government, and in this last decade, taxes have not decreased but have increased (from 32% to 36% of GDP). International markets would immediately punish these policies, and foreign capital would leave the UK immediately.

The challenges of remedying the disasters of 14 years of Tory governments are immense.

To deal with the devastating consequences of the global financial crisis of 2007 08, the executive led by David Cameron launched a savage austerity program to restore order to public finances. The results are still painful today: if back then there were 40 thousand people forced to resort to food distribution, now there are over three million.

Due to deprivation, life expectancy has shortened by six months, and even children have become a little shorter than those in other countries. Welfare cuts have pushed families with more than two children below the poverty line, who have been denied social benefits. And we could continue.

It was primarily the public sector that was demolished. The healthcare system, which for the English is a surrogate for religion, is practically collapsing: the waiting lists in hospitals are endless, people die in emergency rooms and trying to book a visit with a GP is equivalent to playing the lottery. Schools are literally falling apart on the heads of students. At the same time, prisons are so overcrowded that they are forced to release prisoners early. No one repairs the roads, and you risk dying if you swim in the sea or lake, the waters are so polluted.

From a political point of view, the legacy with the most consequences is obviously Brexit. Cameron called the referendum in 2016, convinced that he would win it and thus silence his party's Eurosceptics: a boomerang that returned right in his face, from which everyone is still stunned. A revolution that devoured his children because after leaving the EU, the conservative party took the path of self-destruction.

With Cameron gone from the scene, the inept Theresa May was undone by her inability to bring home an agreement with Brussels. Her successor, Boris Johnson, succeeded but was overwhelmed by his failure to be anything more than a genial entertainer. Boris dragged the Conservatives and the entire nation into disrepute: a serial liar, a despiser of institutions who lurched from one scandal to another.

But whoever came after him, namely Liz Truss accomplished the feat of doing even worse: her uncovered tax cuts brought Great Britain to the brink of financial insolvency for a few days.

Sunak regained the markets' credibility but needed help to rise above the calibre of the ambitious young undersecretary. However, he has been diligent in discrediting his Government with unscrupulous proposals such as the plan to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda or the confirmation of the so-called bedroom tax (under which tenants living in public housing with rooms considered "spare" suffer a reduction in the Housing Benefit, with the resulting in them being forced to finance this reduction with their incomes or move house, or face rent arrears and potential eviction by the public landlord).

Thus, after almost fifteen years, Great Britain emerges shrunken from the long reign of the Tories.

With the economy largely stagnant since outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak took office, reviving growth to enable more spending on public services is a logical approach to the Labour Party's objective. But it was also the mantra of conservatives for a long time. Now, however, this objective should be pursued with different economic recipes.

In the short term, the economy is expected to recover after the recession at the end of last year. Still, structural challenges remain, including an ageing population and tensions in international trade relations. Reforming the planning system and making the UK a more attractive destination for foreign direct investment should be among the Government's priorities.

But how?