John Rentoul is a Blairite. Always has been. His entire political instinct is shaped by a reverence for managerialism, a suspicion of mass politics, and a reflexive hostility to the left. He never understood the Corbyn project. Be that socially, culturally, or ideologically, and his latest column in The Independent is no exception. In it, he proposes that Keir Starmer should fight off the Corbyn-Sultana formation by copying Emmanuel Macron: force the electorate into a binary choice between Starmer and Nigel Farage, just as Macron positioned himself between the French left and the far right. It is, Rentoul insists, clever politics. In reality, it is an argument for fear over hope, control over democracy, and decline over renewal.
Let’s start with the Macron comparison. Rentoul sees in Macron a centrist saviour who twice repelled the far right by corralling a panicked electorate into choosing the lesser evil. What he fails to mention is what came after: a militarised France, the hollowing out of democratic life, and the rise of a furious, disenfranchised public that no longer believes in the political centre. Macron has not defeated the far right, he has incubated it. His strategy of winning by default has poisoned French politics, deepened social fractures, and driven millions into abstention or rage. If that is the model Rentoul proposes for Britain, then he is more honest than he intends: Starmerism, like Macronism, offers no vision. It is an empty vessel.
Rentoul’s take on the new party led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana is equally revealing. He opens with sneers about naming mishaps and internal disputes, because that’s the Blairite comfort zone: dismissing anything not born in a PR firm as amateurish. But beneath the mockery is fear. He knows (as Starmer’s circle knows) that a genuine anti-establishment left party, rooted in working-class anger, anti-war politics, and climate justice, threatens their carefully constructed house of cards. So he returns to the tired canard that support for Gaza and anti-capitalism is “wide but not deep” a line that would be laughable if it weren’t so desperate. Support for Palestinian liberation is widespread and emotionally resonant across Britain. Disillusionment with capitalism is rampant, especially among the young, the indebted, and the precarious. Rentoul simply can’t see it, because his political world begins and ends in Westminster, circa 1997.
Then comes the most cynical part of the article: the notion that Farage is not just an opponent, but a useful one. Rentoul writes approvingly that Starmer’s “most powerful weapon” is the fear of Farage in power. In other words, the plan is to need the far right in order to corral voters back into the arms of a party that offers nothing but authoritarian centrism. It’s the politics of managed decline. Win not by inspiring, but by terrifying the electorate. This isn’t about defeating Farage. It’s about making Farage integral to Starmer’s pitch. Like Macron, Starmer needs his Le Pen to function as the bad cop in a two-man show. The left, in this schema, isn’t just excluded. It must be humiliated, silenced, or blamed for the rise of the far right itself.
Rentoul calls on “good people” to rally behind Starmer to stop Farage, but his argument is itself authoritarian: crush dissent, mock alternatives, and reduce politics to a binary that no one asked for. The tragedy is that it might work (just as it did for Macron) but only at the cost of democratic legitimacy, public trust, and the very possibility of transformative politics.
The truth is, Rentoul doesn’t want a party that offers change. He wants one that manages decline politely and keeps the left out permanently. His problem with the Corbyn-Sultana project isn’t that it’s disorganised. It’s that it exists.
