From the trenches

As reported Exclusively in this blog last month I wrote to Keir Starmer expressing my view that his treatment of Jeremy Corbyn was more a display of weakness than strength. I have now to report that Sir Keir has not replied. I can’t say this comes as a surprise, although I had hoped that he may at least have been able to respond with some generic AI reply. But no such luck. Meanwhile he trails Rishi Sunak in the polls of personal ratings, whilst the Labour Party’s lead over the Tories is beginning to fray. Locally, a Labour councillor has resigned with an excoriating attack on Starmer’s leadership and a by-election beckons. Today, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary singularly failed to support the next wave of nurses’ strikes (didn’t they feel rewarded enough when we all clapped them?) Labour leaders have nearly always preferred to stress their concern for public inconvenience rather than for public service workers whose dedication is routinely taken advantage of. Not for the likes of Wes Streeting or the blessed Starmer any mention of solidarity—and crucially how to build it. On the other hand we now have almost total silence from left wing Labour MPs who are in some cases members of the Socialist Campaign Group. I suspect some of them fear deselection at the hands of Starmer’s thought police. So the Labour Party is diving deeper into a nether world of co-existence with the same old same old politics of uninspiring managerialism (hence the ‘mission statements’) and voters will be offered a Hobson’s choice come the next general election. Labour strategists may think hang on, didn’t Gordon Brown in 1997 say we’d stick to Tory spending plans for two years—and we still won a landslide? There’s the rub. It’s often been said generals fight the next war as if it were the last (i.e. previous) one. So—the message to the Labour faithful is one more heave! No matter the cost, we could yet advance 20 yards!