OPINION - Congratulations Keir Starmer but beware — your honeymoon is over already

The first thing we need to do is congratulate Keir Starmer for his momentous win. It was large, it was collective, and — in the end — it was probably what we all needed. The Starmer revolution has reached its second major inflection point, and no one can deny that this is an extraordinary achievement. To not only detoxify a political party but win a general election so convincingly in five years is little short of remarkable. Some might say his opposition made it easier, but it is still extraordinary.

It is an important moment for the country, and an important moment for London. While the anticipation was nothing compared to Tony Blair’s first win in 1997, this is a landslide of such brutal significance that it can’t fail to change the country. What for such a long time felt like a national distaste for the Conservatives has, overnight, and with some force, turned into a ringing endorsement of Starmer’s Labour Party.

He did it. He really did it. And so the mood of the country is different today.

There has been such a desperation about the Conservatives recently, a petulant refusal to understand that even the centre ground was moving away from them, an arrogance that belied reality.

Starmer — capable, efficient — and Rachel Reeves — smart, pragmatic — will be a formidable team. The new chancellor has also been embraced by the City. One head of an international bank based in London said to me last week: “They’re going to be fine.” But they’re not going to be given much time, and they definitely don’t have much money. Which is a problem, as we expect change. Immediate change. We certainly want to see some in London. Let’s hope this first-time Labour government can work effectively with our three-time Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan.

In the same way that voters did not believe the Conservatives could deliver nine out of 10 of their top manifesto pledges, so they doubted Labour would ever achieve many of theirs. Unfortunately for the Tories, it didn’t matter. Perhaps it was never going to matter. It certainly doesn’t matter now.

Over the last few weeks, the noises coming out of No 10 have been increasingly shrill, as each new “change” announcement was compounded by yet another unforced error, as Sunak’s campaign trail began to look like a comedy road trip. He might have been unfairly blamed for the sins of his predecessors, but the last month has shown him to be a man with at least one tin ear.

It was time for a change.

The Conservatives are gone, and the country, and our city, has had its say. And we’ve said it incredibly loudly. Change was what was requested and change — or at least the opportunity of change — has been delivered. All we have to do now is sit back and complain about what form that change will take. In the last few weeks, Labour have allowed a soupçon of hubris to creep into their narrative — how could it not when they knew they were going to win? But the rude awakening for them, and us, happens today.

I have to say, as a country, we appeared to look forward to the election perhaps like an excited teenager might look forward to their wedding, rather than the marriage itself. It wasn’t commitment we were considering; it was the 24 hours of giddy euphoria involving a lot of champagne and free cake. Followed, perhaps, by a honeymoon of sorts. But there is not going to be any free cake. And for a while, that’s the message the Government will want us to have. We will be told that the era of frivolity is over, that ahead of us are a series of hard choices that we will have to make collectively, whether we like it or not, in order for our country to grow. We voted for it, so we’re culpable. We are entering the age of the puritans, when the morally stern will occupy the higher ground like a gang of feral youths on an abandoned building site, or a flock of seagulls on a disused pier.

There is a narrative that suggests it’s not going to be much fun under this Labour government, but for now we need to give them the benefit of the doubt. It is their time.

As a Londoner, and as a resident of the greatest creative community in the world, one thing I want to hear more about is the new government’s plans for the arts; principally because they don’t appear to have any. Culture is such a low priority for Labour that it hardly figures at all in their forecasts. 1997 this most certainly isn’t. Their manifesto includes a small section about the creative sector in their “Break Down Barriers to Opportunity” section, promising to make arts and music accessible to everyone, regardless of socio-economic or educational background. There’s also some rhetoric regarding the support of children in studying a creative or vocational subject until they are 16. As for funding, they say they aim to improve access to cultural assets by requiring publicly funded national museums and galleries to increase the loans they make from their collections to communities across the country. We need a lot more than that.

Of course, not only do we owe it to our new government to keep the jury out as long as seems fit, but they owe it to us to bring them in as soon as possible. We need to see what the new government are going to do. We don’t need to be told about it; we need to see it. As a paper, as a London media brand, we want to support the new government, but we also need some guidance as to how we might go about that. It’s like the punchline of that old joke, where God leans down through the clouds and says, “You want to win the Lottery? Meet me halfway. Buy a ticket!”

If public scrutiny of Team Starmer was often absent before the election, it’s obviously coming down the pipe. As it should. Policy-wise, for a while Labour will get away with murder — metaphor! — just because they’re not the Conservatives. For months, any policy decision will be greeted with nodding acceptance, because why wouldn’t it? How could it be possible that the new government might make the same awful mistakes as the old one? Not possible! For a while they will be impervious to criticism, embraced like a community policeman who, more through luck than judgment, happens to be in the right place at the right time. But Starmer should beware. His honeymoon period isn’t just beginning, it’s just ended.

Labour’s dream team: victor Keir Starmer and smart, pragmatic Rachel Reeves, inset right. Above, how Tony Blair celebrated triumph in his 1997 landslide

There is a narrative that suggests it’s not going to be much fun under this Labour government, but for now we need to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Dylan Jones is editor-in-chief of the Evening Standard