Paul Samuelson, disciple of the economist John Maynard Keynes, shaped the modern centre-left as an adviser to US presidents John F Kennedy and Lyndon B Johnson. He probably also coined a famous maxim of practical politics (which he sometimes attributed to Keynes): “When the facts change, I change my mind – do you?”
As Keir Starmer reflects on his first five months in Downing Street, he would do well to recall this axiom of the pragmatic left.
The indulgent mandate with which Starmer took power in July was flexible to an extent that past prime ministers would surely envy. Promises on housing, tax and public services were vague and barely fleshed out; sweeping statements on climate change and sexual violence reduction were uncosted and lacking legislative commitments.
A long-trailed promise to reform gambling regulation was reduced in the Labour manifesto to a boilerplate affirmation to “work with the industry on how to ensure responsible gambling”, leading to outrage from disappointed experts in addiction.
Yet the electorate, weary of 14 years of increasingly useless Tory prime ministers, was ready to endorse a Labour alternative based on only the prospect of change and the whiff of a competent aesthetic. (Thanks for the suits, Lord Alli!) The calculated imprecision of Stamer’s manifesto had paid off. He obtained the most enviable prize in politics: five years of government with a blank legislative slate before him.
Five months on, his Government seems unwilling to capitalise on the political flexibility that this victory offered. Instead, he seems unable to adapt to changing circumstances. If he is to make the most of the next five years, this is a skill he will have to learn.
Take the increasingly unsustainable chaos surrounding the future of the Chagos Islands, from which Britain expelled at least 1,500 indigenous inhabitants between 1967 and 1973. The dodgy deal was done to provide Britain’s US allies with a military base. When Starmer announced in October that an agreement had been reached to cede sovereignty of the islands to Mauritius, he was responding to decades of campaigns by fellow human rights lawyers, who have argued that Britain’s failure to atone was a stain on our record and an obstacle to maintaining the ever-shakier “rules-based international order”.
The treaty had certainly been a long time coming. Supported by the Indian government, in 2019 Mauritius’s then prime minister Pravind Jugnauth obtained an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice calling for Britain to cede sovereignty to Mauritius. David Lammy has suggested this made it unsustainable for Britain to take the legal high ground on other global issues. Labour outriders, notably the new National Security Adviser Jonathan Powell, have asserted repeatedly that this deal was initiated by the previous Conservative government and should carry cross-party support.
Yet if this looked inevitable and necessary in October, by November the realities had radically changed. Starmer does not appear to have adjusted his approach with them. The most obvious change is the election of Donald Trump, who has little concern for the niceties of international human rights law and every interest in asserting America’s right to trample on other people’s agreements.
In this case, however, Trump may have a point. In an era in which China makes no bones about strategic land grabs throughout the neighbouring seas, it makes little sense for either Britain or the US to set a precedent in ceding naval territory. In a shockingly complacent interview for Times Radio in early October, Powell dismissed the Chagos Islands as “tiny islands in the middle of the Indian Ocean where no one actually goes”; within a minute, however, he had admitted that India had backed the transfer of this land to Mauritius, “because they see it as so important for security in the Indian Ocean”.
If Powell was scornful and dismissive of his critics then, he has shown no signs of softening his approach after Trump’s return to the scene. On Monday, The Sun reported that Powell had flown out to Mauritius to hurry the deal through. The facts have changed, but neither he or Starmer have changed with them.
The UK Prime Minister and his allies have presented this new treaty as an act of conscience, a reparation that will improve the lives of those most blighted by Britain’s past mistakes. If they genuinely believe this to be so, they are mistaken. Mauritius is particularly notorious for its treatment of low-income, ethnic minority workers.
This includes ethnic Chagossians, who are largely the descendants of African slaves – these are a people whose families have been transported across continents against their will for multiple generations, and see no reason to trust either the British, Americans, Indians or Mauritians.
A report by Human Rights Watch, which is otherwise highly critical of the British and enthusiastically advocates “decolonisation”, acknowledges Chagossians deported to Mauritius in the 1960s have found themselves living in abject poverty. This is in part thanks to the disappearance or reduction in reparations earmarked for them by Britain, which were supposedly administered by the Mauritian government but have not always reached their intended recipients. In many cases, the Mauritian government simply offered patches of land as a substitute.
Fundamentally, however, the lessons of the Chagos Islands debacle go far beyond the question of whether this particular deal benefits or further victimises the unfortunate people at its centre. The election of Trump has reshaped the certainties of the world before 5 November; Starmer will have to learn that he cannot push through old agreements made with the Biden administration.
He is fortunate: few men have entered Downing Street with fewer commitments. Yet he needs to learn when to change tack, not just on foreign policy. He would have done better to intervene earlier in the growing mess over Kim Leadbeater’s private members bill – perhaps promising a Royal Commission in order to investigate ethical options for end-of-life care – or to promise less and reflect more before finding himself struggling to answer questions this week over employment benefits.
If he does so, Keir Starmer will learn that political flexibility is a strength, not a weakness. On the global stage, the facts have changed. He should change his approach with them.
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