Keir Starmer’s government is seen as “a tired bunch of same-again politicians” and must rediscover a reforming zeal and energy, the former UK justice secretary Charlie Falconer has said.
The Labour peer, who held a number of senior positions under Tony Blair, said the government “lacked a sense of energy”, and that this was even more important to restore than to pursue any search for a wider narrative or story – one of the most common criticisms of the government.
Without that, he said, Labour risked losing all credit for its big achievements from employment and renters’ rights to green energy and major infrastructure investments.
Falconer, once a close adviser to Starmer who served in his first shadow cabinet, said he believed Starmer was still the right leader for the party but added that missteps in Labour’s first year had resulted in a massive drop in confidence for ministers, which must be regained.
He said that No 10 should learn from agenda-driven cabinet ministers such as Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and Shabana Mahmood on how to unapologetically drive through ideological change on housing, energy and the justice system.
Falconer said he was worried the party’s best announcements were being missed or overshadowed.
“We had a 10-year health service plan which was splendid in every single respect … but it sort of plopped into an ocean and I don’t believe it has made any impact whatsoever on the public consciousness or on what people think about us in relation to the health service,” he said.
“I think we are a quite energetic government, [but] we are characterised as a tired bunch of same-again politicians, and that is not right.”
Falconer said the emergence of Jeremy Corbyn’s Your party and the surge in popularity of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK showed people wanted a political movement with a very clear identity.
“It makes it all the more important that Labour has a tangible, identifiable political personality. People don’t vote for Diet Coke. They vote for the real thing.”
Falconer said that did not mean the party should lurch further to the right or left. “Was Tony Blair left or right? He was energetically progressive. He was a government that had agency and at the moment we are too easily characterised as a government without agency.”
He reeled off the employment rights bill – “a terrific piece of legislation, very bold” – the renters’ rights bill, the planning bill and assisted dying. “This is a reforming and progressive government, there’s a hell of a lot going on, and yet our popularity ratings are falling through the floor.”
Falconer, who advised Starmer’s leadership campaign and his early appointments of ministers, said the prime minister’s personality meant that kind of bombast was difficult.
“There is absolutely no sense of a confident morning. Part of it is because – this is a good thing – the prime minister’s personality is an unflashy personality. He thinks the right thing to do is not to spend your time telling people what you’re doing, it’s putting your head down and doing it.
“But there is more to leading the country than delivery. There is also the sense you give the country of what’s happening.”
It would be wrong for MPs or the wider party to conclude that a change of leadership was required, he said. “I do think he’s the right person, indeed. The moment that conversation starts [about leadership change], everybody immediately goes back to Keir and recognises that he’s the best leader for us.”
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But there had been a long shadow cast by the initial cuts to the winter fuel allowance, he said. “The winter fuel thing so quickly made the public think we were no better or no different.”
Falconer said he believed the government was making far too little of its achievements and allowing itself to be buffeted by events and media criticism.
“The atmosphere in the country is so different when the government is confident,” he said.
Some of the most frequently criticised cabinet ministers – such as Miliband, the energy and net zero secretary, and Rayner, the local government secretary – were doing the right thing in fighting hard for their own agendas, Falconer said.
“Ed Miliband strongly believes in what he’s going to do, there’s lots of people who criticise it, but he’s getting on with it, and that gives that whole area of policy a sense of energetic drive,” he said. Rayner “introduced the workers’ rights, she’s doing the housing stuff, and again … She’s proud of them”.
Falconer said he was most struck by Mahmood’s approach to the justice portfolio, where some of the most radical reforms were being made. “Shabana has been an absolutely brilliant, reforming lord chancellor in enormously difficult circumstances. She is somebody whose sense of confidence about what she’s doing is something the whole government should emulate.”
Falconer was concerned that the government appeared too in hock to financial markets – even if it was important to show fiscal discipline. “The ability to cope and not be knocked off course is the key thing on the economy,” he said. “Eventually a paralysis will set in, if ultimately the country thinks the bond market is determining the whole of our policy.”
Falconer said he knew from his own time in government, where he served as the solicitor general as well as the justice secretary, that a “sudden plunge in popularity” was very damaging to morale. “Your political confidence does tend to go if everything you do is simply parlayed into ‘another fuck-up by the government’,’” he said. “Then you begin to say: ‘Well, let’s not talk about anything.’ Ultimately that never works.”