I’m sure if he had been allowed to stay he would have stuck by them through thick and thin. But Starmer’s Labour Party is run by people who couldn’t organise a village fete. They have absolutely no idea of tactics and only know how to expel, denigrate and deny.
No political party has ever won an election the first time it stands. Even Roy Jenkins made a complete mess of it when he set up the Social Democratic Party, a hopelessly misnamed political grouping of has beens and politicians nursing a grudge. Jenkins had a formidable track record. JC doesn’t despite the ability to make a fine speech and a knack for being on the side of the angels. He’s a thoroughly decent man.
So it’s hopeless? Maybe not. No Government has ever managed to make such a pig’s ear in the first year of its term of office. It seems almost impossible to believe Labour could win the next election.
So if not Labour then whom, or perhaps which? The Tories have been doing their best to be unelectable for years. People want a change. They don’t want the Tories because Labour has turned out to be Tory mark 2. If they are rejecting Labour they are also rejecting the Tories for the same reasons.
Could the Liberals do it? Unfortunately they have an unerring ability to win bye elections but lose general elections.
That leaves the Greens but I fear their soft under belly will be exposed. Britain is not generally like Brighton.
And that leaves the rather unpleasant Farage, if he can be bothered to spend his time on this side of the pond. Could he win? He could certainly get a large block of MPs, particularly if it got out that the Liberals wanted to take us back into Europe. That might win him 80 seats or more.
So is the election going to be won by that famous party activist abstainers often scrawl onto the ballot paper: none of the above?
It could happen. Certainly there is one thing you can predict without fear of getting it wrong. The next election is going to be one the like of which has never been seen in this country.
Jonathan Brind