Play the ball - or something like that

It’s quite possible that I’m overdoing this. That is me banging on about how Starmer got fewer votes than did Corbyn in 2019. But given how the media, particularly the ‘mainstream media’ latch on to a narrative and then repeat its fundamental components over and over again, why shouldn’t I? It was political mastermind Peter (judge me by the friends I keep) Mandelson who coined the phrase in the mid-90s that you have to repeat a message over and over again until your intended audience vomits. Then they may have grasped the point you want to make (then it was in reference to ‘22 Tory tax rises’) Well, I don’t want any of my select readership to vomit, but what’s sparked off this little rant is listening to Labour’s campaign co-ordinator Pat McFadden telling listeners to BBC’s ‘Political Thinking’ that any questions about the 2024 vote share are essentially irrelevant, drawing an analogy with football (inevitably). His point was that if you win on goalscore, there’s little point the other side moaning that they had more corners. What are we to make of this, apart from the fact that England may win the Euros despite what many people consider to have been a pretty mediocre performance so far? But if you win, then every mistake you made is suddenly transformed into an only now revealed act of great wisdom—our only problem being that we didn’t recognise this sooner. As Labour hums in self-satisfaction it must hope that our team wins the Euros and doesn’t just end up with more corners than Spain. Things can turn pretty quickly.