Keir Starmer can take control of the debate on patriotism, argues Dr Hamid Khan, but Alasdair Macdonald fears the Labour leader is doomed to failure. Alan Wolinski thinks he should listen to Nesrine Malik
Andy Beckett points out the risks in Keir Starmer’s talk of “the national interest” (Is Keir Starmer’s professed patriotism a strength or a weakness?, 31 December). He acknowledges that Clement Attlee successfully rode his patriotism to electoral success in 1945. But where Attlee’s patriotism seemed a genuine conviction, there’s been an expediency to Labour leaders draping themselves in the union flag lately. It comes across as a panicky reaction to bad opinion polls rather than a genuine love of country. The British public can sense this disingenuousness and they don’t take kindly to it.
Where the left falls down is that, in its rush to be ostentatiously progressive, it has abandoned the field of patriotism and allowed it to be churned up and rehashed in the shape of a slightly nasty nativism à la Priti Patel. Unless Labour actively makes a different case, though, rather than simply playing dress-up, Starmer can scream until he’s red, white and blue in the face. Nobody will take him seriously so long as the only vision of patriotism is the one presented by the send-them-back brigade of Tory ministers, because they might as well vote for the people who really believe it.
