The Left

In my lifetime, Labour has won a majority of the popular vote in a UK election just once. In 1997 when Tony Blair swept to power.

Blair had faults, but also did much good. I am not going to defend his record on the 2003 Iraq War, it felt very strange being in the RAF at the time, preparing to go to fight in a war I was fundamentally opposed to.

But Blair brought in the minimum wage, proper support for Education and the NHS.

Blair won because he won over “Middle England”, he got support from The Sun, and appealed to them.

Fast forward to 2015, and Corbyn became leader and lost the first of three elections, the last one against the worst UK Conservative Government of all time, hell bent on executing the most damaging policy of all. Final score Con 365, Lab 203.

Labour under Corbyn might have been right on with the left wing policies, but it won no one over. It might make them feel warm inside promising all sorts of things, but without power, they were just fairy stories.

Corbyn eventually went, and was replaced by Keir Starmer, who is everything Corbyn isn’t: analytical, cerebral, and good in debate. PMQs now resemble a battle zone with Johnson looking defeated before it starts.

And over the weekend, Starmer gave an interview to the Daily Mail. Or was it Sunday Mail. And the Left are up in arms, and the hashtag, #Starmerresign trended for 24 hours. Labour will never win another election preaching to the converted, it just becomes a huge echo chamber, writing in the Mail gives him the opportunity to speak directly to Conservative Mail readers and maybe build on a victory in the next election.

Because it is the only way Labour will win. Scotland is lost to the SNP, once its heartland, now reduced to a single MP, in order to form a minority Government, Labour would have to win Conservative seats with the smallest majorities up to and including the seat which has JRM as sitting MP. The hole Labour is in is that deep.

But Labour, and to a lesser extend the Democrats in the US, would it seem, fight among themselves than fight the common enemy of the Tories and the existential damage Brexit and Johnson will do to the country.

Starmer isn’t perfect, but he is the best shot at getting Labour elected in the next election which might be four and a half years away, or maybe much sooner.

I am a socialist. Or think of myself as one, but primarily a realist too. You can’t help anyone by not being in power, and in fact, forces a corrupt Conservative Government on the country. I did vote for Corby, because I knew anyone was better than Johnson, but the rest of the country didn’t think so, and so we have Johnson, Brexit and his deadly handling of COVID and now the A Level fiasco, all avoidable if Labour had have been electable.