The major criticism of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is that it is too cautious.
Starmer has inspired, or uninspired depending how you look at it, headlines asking whether he is too boring to be Prime Minister, he has rebuked his own cabinet to stop calling him boring, and former Labour spin-doctors have come out to dismiss his alleged dullness.
There’s lots of reasons behind this caricature. It’s partially media spin and concoction. It’s sort of who Starmer is as a professional bureaucrat. And it’s also partially politics. Starmer became Labour Party leader years out from a general election with no incentive to announce lots of new policy initiatives.
And Starmer is cautious because it is working. There is no historical precedent for Starmer to lose from his current poll lead. While there is significant attention on Starmer’s cautious temperament, it is underappreciated that caution is also a policy choice.
