What would a successful Labour leader look like?

The Labour leadership race has narrowed down to three candidates: Rebecca Long-Bailey, Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy. One will become Labour leader and then have the unenviable task of battling Boris Johnson in the next election. Assuming climate change or nuclear war doesn't wipe humanity out first.

Labour Party members, which includes myself, must decide who we want to lead us, so it's worth asking who we think would be the most successful leader of the Labour Party. Jeremy Corbyn was a major reason why many people didn't vote Labour last year, which left me wondering: what can we learn from him about what makes a good Labour leader? What would a successful Labour leader look like?

After the 2019 election defeat, a friend of mine said that what people want in a Prime Minister is a bland bank manager. Someone who appears professional, intelligent and responsible. Someone who isn’t going to shake things up too much. Someone we can trust be a sensible, surprise-free captain of the ship of state.

Radicalism can be a scary prospect

I think there’s something to this. It isn’t what I want for a Labour leader or Prime Minister - I want someone radical. There’s lots of things that need to be shaken up and I want the Prime Minister who’s going to do it. If we try and tackle the climate crisis without shaking things up a bit, we won't get anywhere before we’re all dead.

I acknowledge that most people find radicalism a scary prospect. The scale of the changes to our country that Corbyn was offering made people nervous. Lots of people want someone they can trust to look after everything and not do anything rash like ripping out our entire economic model. The idea that reassuring voters is a way to beat a maverick like Johnson is something the Labour leadership candidates should take note of.

Tony Blair bank manager

According to this theory, Tony Blair won three general elections because he was better at the bland bank manager act than the three Tory leaders he faced. David Cameron beat Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband because he was a better at looking like a bland bank manager than they were. Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn didn’t look like sensible bank managers and so neither of them won a majority.

By this logic, Starmer is the best bland bank manager. His boring public persona is an asset, making people free calmed and reassured by him. Starmer has failed to inspire me as either a great reformer (like Corbyn promised to be) or a charismatic leader (like Barack Obama), but I can see the logic of appearing bland and inoffensive to reassure worried voters.

To be fair, both Nandy and Long-Bailey have strong bank manager vibes. Long-Bailey used to be a solicitor and Nandy doesn't shirk the conventions of how we expect a politician to look and behave, as say, Dominic Cummings, does. All three of the candidates do a better bank manager act than Corbyn did.

Keir Starmer bank manager?

Starmer most resembles a bland bank manager because he most resembles the people we’re used to seeing in positions of authority. This is because he’s a well-educated white man. This is also what most of our Prime Ministers and all of our Labour Party leaders have looked like, which partly explains Starmer’s large poll lead. If you asked most people to draw a picture of what the Prime Minister looks like in abstract, then you’d get something resembling Starmer from most people. This gives candidates like Long-Bailey and Nandy a disadvantage from the start and it’s part of the reason why women and people of colour find it harder to make it to the top jobs in politics.

If we want a bland bank manager for the Labour Party leader, then Starmer is the obvious choice. However, is that really what people want? Do we want a safe pair of hands while homelessness and child poverty are rising and the world hurtles towards an environmental disaster?

America is going through their own version of this right now with the race to become the Democratic nominee for president. Currently Joe Biden is on his fifth comeback and looks like he might become the nominee. Biden has bland bank manager in spades (coupled with American folksy charm) whereas his main rival, Bernie Sanders, is the epitome of a scary radical.

There are many differences between British and American politics, but I will say that the Biden pitch shows the risks of being an uninspiring, ‘safe pair of hands’ candidate, i.e. he will lose to nationalist bully Donald Trump. This Guardian article draws interesting parallels between the USA today and the USSR in the 1980s, where the leadership was desperate to keep the candidate for radical change from power. The most damning point is that although Biden is a great bland bank manager, he lacks substance and, considering the state of the world, we need substance from our leaders now.

Inspiring leadership

Corbyn, for all his faults, did inspire people that politics can be more than letting nervous voters decide who is the least surprising bank manager type person and letting them inhabit Number 10 for a few years where they will hopefully do as little as possible. Corbyn showed us that we can aspire to change, to be a better country. Of course, what is inspiring to one person is scary to another and radicalism inspired many to vote against him. This strategy also falls down if the candidate can’t live up to the weight of expectations put upon them and deliver inspiring change: as happened with Barack Obama.

Of course, not everyone wants the same thing in a leader. There is also a generational element to this. Older voters, who are more likely to have their mortgages paid off and be sitting on a good pension, are (generally speaking) more likely to want a bland bank manager type leader who will not shake things up too much. Younger voters want, and need, someone more radical to head off the problems that are likely to dominate our lives, such as the climate emergency, automation taking away all the jobs and global politics becoming increasing unstable. Older people are more insulated from these existential risks, mainly because they are unlikely to see them fully play out.

I think we (young and old) do want to be inspired by our politicians, and the focus on who was the best bland bank manager during the 90s and 2000s and is one reason for many people’s dismal view of politics today. I think that a politician who can inspire people to be better and live up to that inspiration can win over a bland bank manager.

Radical bland bank managers

Of course, a politician can resemble a bland bank manager and act in a radical way. Johnson sold his plan to fundamentally change the British economy via Brexit as nothing too radical and many nervous voters opted for over Corbyn’s radicalism. Perhaps this is what we’ll get from Starmer. A don’t scare the horses approach to change that the country needs. However, by moving slowly and timidly to not to scare the horses, we might not make it in time to save them from drowning.

On the 27th of February Labour Party turned 120. In that time Labour has spent only 30 years in power and has only had four leaders who have won elections. With this in mind the question of what a good leader of the Labour Party would look like is more pressing than ever. However, I’m worried that in a rush to find someone inoffensive, who doesn’t scare voters, we might miss the possibility of inspiring them.