Starmer as 'crackdown Keir' needs to make sure government works well under him

The entry of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer into No 10 Downing Street and US Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the US presidential ticket means the 2024 election outcomes could define this as the year of the prosecutor.

Both have acted as overseers of criminal law in the past.

Just over a month after Mr Starmer became British Prime Minister, he has reprised his prosecutor credentials to take on nationwide protests.

The events of the past two weeks are now set to define his premiership and the kind of UK he will eventually hand on.

Mass riots with an ugly, prejudiced undertow led to many countries, including the UAE, warning their citizens against travel to the UK. On the world stage the surge in criminality presented a face of the country as divided and self-harming.

Parallels were made with looting and urban chaos in 2011 when former British prime minister David Cameron was not long in office. At a political level, the two events were comparable because they tested the character of the new team in extremis.

As it happens, Mr Starmer had his own playbook this time. Twelve years earlier he had mobilised his prosecutor teams to quickly punish the offenders with 24-hour courts. These have been revived.

The case last week of the 69-year-old man given almost three years in prison after he lost self-control to take part in a riot quickly became an example to others of the pointless violence.

Judge Andrew Menary, in sentencing the man, said it was still not clear what the protesters were protesting about when they came onto the streets after the murder of children in Southport two weeks ago.

King Charles III paid tribute to those who stood against the “aggression and criminality of the few”.

Right-wing messages powering the 2024 protests (“give us our country back”) were the opposite of the social justice youth and gangs-led revolt in 2011.

Mr Starmer knows the outcome of the UK general election makes this challenge from the hardest fringes of the right the most potent politics he faces over the coming years.

The July election came within a whisker of destroying the Conservative party. It has little now but vapours to run on. It is deeply split over the emergence of Nigel Farage's Reform UK as a parliamentary party on its flank.

One of the leading contenders to succeed Rishi Sunak, Robert Jenrick, has already called for the phrase "Allahu Akbar” (or God is the greatest) to be banned after counter-demonstrations became the focus of the right-wing press.

The sobriquet of the Conservatives as "the stupid party" is not always empty political rhetoric. There is a tradition of leading figures behaving deliberately irresponsibly to pander to the base. It is an important element of its ability to restore its mandate in times of trouble. For Mr Jenrick and other contenders, it is the only obvious strategy. The problem is the last government tried that approach to the point of disaster.

But there are other dangers at the current juncture. For Mr Starmer, there are internal political dangers he must decide about. A letter last week from a senior Labour backbencher made a public call on the Prime Minister to hold formal talks with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), a group that has been more or less excluded from officials since the Gordon Brown premiership.

Taking the opportunity for re-entry into the bureaucracy has since been a prime goal of the MCB, which has well-documented roots in the Muslim Brotherhood.

The potential opening to barge back in is boosted by a weakness at the heart of Labour's massive majority.

The election saw some leading members of Mr Starmer’s team returned with diminished majorities, challenged by independents over its Gaza policies. Defraying this electoral threat next time round is uppermost for many, including no doubt, Jess Philips, a home office minister who (unfairly) came under fire last week for appearing to take a two-tier response to violence from the rioters compared to the counter-demonstrators.

For Mr Starmer, the prosecutor PM, the way forward is fairly obvious, assuming that the worst of the violence has now been seen.

The Labour party has a tradition of drastic law and order policy. Having not revealed much about his approach in this sphere in the manifesto, he can now pivot to a “crackdown Keir” and control his government on its lines. New and pliant MPs can be corralled behind this approach.

There is a second front he appears to be launching as well. Good politics can be built around the idea that the government is an active player representing the people's interest against the ugly fallouts of social media.

Mr Starmer can project the UK government as a fighter against the big (and foreign) unaccountable corporations that are shaping lives in ways that appear to be reckless or actively damaging. Researchers at the British not-for-profit organisation Centre for Countering Digital Hate estimate that 10 accounts reinstated by Elon Musk on X earned $19 million after reaching 2.5 billion tweet impressions – money for their poison, so to speak.

It is important to note that Mr Starmer has already detached the government from the Sunak-era cultivation of AI with a process of self-regulation.

Funds had been cut from the Sunak AI team and key members had left. It is now up to the UK to see if it can pioneer a regulatory framework for AI and social media that is tough, provides meaningful wages and financial penalties – and that retains the UK's foothold as a base for the development of the industry.

It does not hurt Mr Starmer that he has the wrath of Elon Musk as a foil to magnify his announcements and bolster his relevance.

With his sights set on a 10-year change government, Mr Starmer clearly wants to show he can make his government work. In the core area of making policing work, the prisons function as they should, and proving that he can balance community interests, he has now got a clear definition of where to shine the spotlight of his leadership.

The fringe politics that contested the streets of the UK last week are also a wellspring of the distrust in leadership that social media tends to actively promote.

The idea that vast sums of money are constantly poured into a state that doesn't work for its end users is the second wave of this social media-driven disillusionment.

Mr Starmer the prosecutor can mount his case against all of this with reforms that make a difference to how people perceive the UK.

And in the US, that to my mind has not really recovered from the Antifa/Portland demonstrations of 2020, messaging of this sort from Ms Harris would act as an antidote to Donald Trump's attacks that are imminent en route to the November presidential elections.

If she does follow Mr Starmer with a win, Ms Harris, like the British Prime Minister, will need to bring new thinking to the issue of migration through porous borders.

For all the revulsion at their violence and rhetoric, grievances at the fringes must also be addressed with a firm hand.