Politics is much easier when you’re not actually in charge, as Keir Starmer is finding out. It’s not the lack of accountability that makes things simpler in opposition, it’s the sense that you are freer to be guided by principles rather than knowing you’ll have to follow warm words with actions.
But from the NHS to the economy, Labour politicians now find their own words thrown back at them across the House of Commons chamber at a surprising rate. “That’s not what you said in opposition” has become a favourite flourish of those on the Conservative benches.
The latest tricky issue is on reparations for the UK’s involvement in slavery – a knotty and emotional topic rarely discussed in Westminster.
It’s not something Starmer has spoken much about publicly before, but his Foreign Secretary David Lammy has. In 2018 he called for reparations to be paid to Caribbean islands and has spoken movingly about his own heritage in speeches.
But I’m told by senior diplomatic sources that paying reparations is firmly off the table for the UK Government. Saying sorry is........