Starmer’s big speech barely moves the betting markets
So after eighteen months in the job Starmer has had his first chance to address his party. I was quite surprised by the heckling which he dealt with well and possibly encouraged most in the audience to be even more enthusiastic about what he was saying. This was the assessment of the Guardian’s Zoe Williams:
Starmer’s speech revealed three critical weakness – the first rhetorical, the second programmatic, the third both. But it wasn’t without merit. With long, impassioned personal stories, the Labour leader resituated the ideas of crime and security around the killing of a young woman by her violent ex-partner and the murder of Stephen Lawrence – thus managing to knit together his lawyerly image of punishing the wrongdoer with the anti-sexist, anti-racist values of the crowd. He pulled off something else, too: “Let’s get totally serious about this,” Starmer told a conference hall that was itching, at this point, to stand up (though whether in ovation or escape it was genuinely hard to say): “We can win the next general election.” The end of his statement was unspoken – “so long as you lot pipe down” – yet somehow almost everybody managed to get it…But Starmer is still genuinely uncomfortable talking about himself. In the early days of his leadership, those with his ear used to plead with him to show more of his background. Starmer still finds this toe curling, and though he has finally been persuaded of its necessity,he goes at it with a sincerity that is over-baked and painful to watch. “The eye on the object,” was how he repeatedly distilled his father’s craftsmanship. It was meant to mean something, but in God’s name, what? Honest, working people, staring at things; those are Labour Values.
On the betting markets there was little reaction. On Betfair he slipped from a 19% chance to be next PM to an 18% one. The Tories price on them winning an overall majority is down a touch and Smarkets still have 2023 the favourite for Starmer’s exit date.
The big thing is how the national media treat it. I got a sense that many journalists were irritated by how long it went on for. It would have been more effective if it had been shorter.