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Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world Keir Starmer has at least learned one important lesson in his lackluster 15 months as UK leader: His Labour Party’s only chance of saving the country from a hard-right Nigel Farage government lies in reclaiming the mantle of patriotism. Parties can survive all sorts of economic misfortunes — the Conservatives survived 14 years of stagnant growth and Brexit-inspired turmoil — but they cannot survive the suspicion that they would rather wave the European flag than the Union Jack. So far Starmer is doing no better at reclaiming patriotism than he is at improving productivity. The prime minister makes all the right gestures. “I always sit in front of the Union Jack,” he told the BBC. “I have been doing so for years,” he added, before boasting that his family have “a St. George flag in our flat.” And his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, is obsessed with reforging Labour’s links with regular people. But there is something plastic and insincere about all this flag sitting — as if the prime minister is playing the role of a patriot rather than speaking from the heart.
