Starmer's at a turning point. Which way will he choose?

Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer addresses a meeting during a visit to The Hub - Solihull Mosque in the West Midlands. AFP

With a new government and new prime minister, the UK is taking a new direction. But this moment is also a once-in-a-generation turning point.

Back in the 1950s, former prime minister Harold MacMillan faced a similar challenge. The real problem with a turning point, he said, is deciding "which way to turn". That's the challenge for Keir Starmer.

He has begun well by being tough in the face of riots in some of England's towns. Lawbreakers go to jail. Racism and Islamophobia are clearly rejected by the vast majority of citizens. But in most newspapers, the froth of political life still dominates.

We discovered that the country's highest-earning MP is Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform UK party. Reform is often in the news despite the fact that it managed to secure fewer seats in the whole of England UK (five) than Sinn Fein did in the much-smaller Northern Ireland (seven).

Mr Farage earns £98,000 ($127,000) a month as a TV presenter on a largely unwatched right-wing TV channel. He earns more in one month than an MP's annual salary. When Parliament resumes, other legislators may wonder how a part-time MP truly represents his constituents. Even if he makes news because he has a kind of charisma (love it or loathe it), Mr Farage remains a sideshow.

Besides, I prefer uncharismatic politicians who get the job done. These include former prime minister Clement Attlee, dull on the surface but the most transformative leader in recent history. Winston Churchill is supposed to have said Attlee was so boring that "an empty taxi arrived at 10 Downing Street and Clement Attlee got out of it".

Attlee became prime minister in 1945. This post-Second World War turning point led to the creation of the National Health Service, the nationalisation of key industries, including the coal mines, and profound educational reforms that continued through the 1960s with the creation of new universities and a better modern UK.

Attlee himself wanted results, not headlines. He instructed government ministers: "You will be judged by what you succeed at, not by what you attempt." Mr Starmer – regarded as a sharp brain but a dull speaker – should follow that principle.

He has an enormous parliamentary majority based on a one-word election slogan that captured the feelings of millions of Britons: change. But what – if anything – can change mean when the core British problem is lack of money? Taxes are already high. The public sector is crumbling.

Yet again Attlee is an inspiration.

The post-war UK was so strapped for cash that in the fierce winter of 1947 thousands of Londoners went to the glass hothouses at Kew Gardens meant for plants just to keep warm. Taking power in 1945, Attlee expanded the state enormously. Even when Conservative governments took power, Attlee's basic principles of an expanded public sector remained until 1979.

That's when Margaret Thatcher began the counter-revolution. After this Thatcherite turning point, houses built with public money were sold off to private owners – a hugely popular policy. The railways, the publicly owned airline, the publicly owned coal mines and other industries, including water supplies, were sold off, transformed or closed.

Luckily for Starmer, the opposition Conservative party is such a shambles that he has breathing space

But now in 2024, we are again at a turning point potentially as profound as 1945 or 1979. When I travel to public meetings, voters speak of a hunger for change. There's a culture of complaint about everything from poor train services to the inability for many of us to see doctors and dentists. Prisons are full. Police are stretched. Some universities face an autumn financial crisis.

Mr Starmer has a huge majority, but it's less clear if he has a mandate for specific changes. Yet perhaps, that is an asset. It means that he can be pragmatic, not dogmatic. And it would be immensely cheering if we have now, as with Attlee in 1945, a government thinking beyond the next day's headlines and even beyond the next election to the next generation.

Luckily for Mr Starmer, the opposition Conservative party is such a shambles that he has breathing space. The Conservatives can grumble but not get in the way. After seeing them in power for 14 years, many voters have stopped listening to their message altogether.

Moreover, Conservatives themselves are at a turning point. Do they turn to the right to see off the existential threat from Reform UK, an even more right-wing party? Or do they scramble back to the centre of politics, which is where most voters are? Whatever they do, nobody (except party members) needs to care for a year or two.

Mr Starmer, therefore, has room to get on with the job of changing the UK, perhaps – as with Thatcher and Attlee – for a generation. Even if there is no magic money tree, Mr Starmer also rides on a huge wave of public longing for a better UK.

He's lucky in his political enemies. Those on the right loathe each other so much their internecine feuding means that they have no time to get in the way. Yet the key question remains: at this turning point, which way will Mr Starmer turn?