OPINION - Keir Starmer should steal Tory clothes and wear the flag of St George proudly

Like a spectral invigilator, George Orwell is never far from our political discourse. Yesterday, Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer dramatised respectively the sharp distinction he drew in a famous 1945 essay between nationalism and patriotism. The Prime Minister, for his part, finally ensured that his Rwanda bill will become law, after a lengthy “ping pong” between the Commons and Lords ended late last night. At a press conference earlier in the day, he insisted that deportation flights would begin in 10 to 12 weeks, “no ifs, no buts”.

Yet to what end? The policy that has become Sunak’s defining fixation and electoral offer to the Conservative base exemplifies what Orwell called the nationalist “power hunger tempered by self-deception”.

In his performatively butch obsession with “stopping the boats” and deporting a relatively small number of refugees at huge expense — more than £540 million so far — Sunak has managed to appear both mean-spirited and ineffective.

The Labour leader, meanwhile, was chairing a shadow cabinet meeting at the St George’s Park national football centre in Staffordshire, declaring that “patriotism is a force for good” and that a greater emphasis upon team sport in state schools would be a priority for his party in government. This softer-edged version of love of country conforms precisely to Orwell’s “devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people”. Over the weekend, Starmer argued in a Telegraph article that the Conservatives had “denigrated some of our proudest national institutions — from the BBC, to the National Trust and England football team” and that “Labour is the patriotic party now. We will celebrate St George’s Day with enthusiasm”.

Platitudinous rhetoric? Possibly. For a start, any campaign to bolster school sports would have to address the scandalous shortage of playing fields — 215 of which were sold off between 2010 and 2019 in England alone.

But there are reasons to think that the Labour leader is, at least in principle, on to something here. For a start, it is electorally essential that he emphasises this aspect of the party’s identity under his leadership.

In 2019, millions of voters, especially in the Red Wall, turned away from Jeremy Corbyn precisely because he seemed so unpatriotic: most egregiously when he had suggested in the previous year that samples from the poisoning in Salisbury of Sergei and Yulia Skripal be sent to Moscow for testing. Starmer cannot emphasise often enough that he is not the same as his predecessor.

Second, it is no less important that he immunises Labour against the charge — which the Conservatives will certainly make at the election — that a Starmer government would seek to relitigate Brexit. It is true that the party, quite rightly, wants a closer relationship with the European Union in trade, travel and security. But it needs public permission to embark upon such negotiations, and — to secure that permission — must reassure voters that its only concern is the national interest rather than (as Brexiteers will claim) a project to rejoin the EU by stealth.

Third, the Tories have shredded their ancestral reputation as the party of patriotism by a combination of recklessness and zeal. They have treated our national institutions with intermittent disdain, even lying to the monarch over the prorogation of Parliament. This terrain now lies vacant.

Fourth, and most important, Starmer’s deployment of the language of patriotism has the particular merit of sounding authentic. When, for the first time, delegates at the Labour conference sang the national anthem last year, it did not seem false or forced. As Tom Baldwin writes in his biography of the Labour leader, many of his friends “believe there has always been something of the ‘small town patriot’ about him… that makes him distinct from sections of the ‘north London metropolitan elite’”.

The strategy is not without risks. The scorn expressed in 2014 by Emily Thornberry (now shadow attorney general) for homes displaying St George’s flags has not been forgotten. Others in Labour’s ranks may struggle with what they regard as jingoism or colonialism-lite.

Yet Labour is a party with a 20-point poll lead in need of a theme. Patriotism doesn’t pay the bills, build affordable housing or shorten NHS waiting lists. But it can provide an appealing frame within which to tackle such challenges: one that accepts the scale of the civic task and connects it explicitly to the public good, social solidarity and love of country. Starmer is right to try it. Happy St George’s Day.

Matthew d’Ancona is an Evening Standard columnist