Lost, stranded, at least one rescue attempt failed, possibly fighting for survival. Not the whale in the Thames, but the position of the Labour leader.
Keir Starmer’s leadership is facing a crisis, partly of his own making. His mishandled shadow cabinet reshuffle has only added to the disquiet caused by the party’s crushing defeat in the Hartlepool by-election.
The answer to this malaise is not more policy. Labour cannot move for detail. Now, the public wants Starmer to tell us what he stands for, what he believes in. Principles trump policy.
Fundamentally, market research and policies don’t deliver a winning strategy. You need to get the values sorted first. What is the Labour Party for in the age of big government nationalism?
Tony Blair won over Mondeo man because he believed in him. Labour needs to once again reach out beyond the public sector and the disadvantaged to build a coalition of the aspirational.
Starmer started well, with a relentless drive to rid the party of anti-Semitism. But he needs to go much further to detoxify his party after five years of Corbynism.
This set of elections was never going to be easy. The Government is enjoying a vaccine bounce, lockdown restrictions are easing and Brexit, for all the economic pain to come, is ‘done’.
But leaders of the opposition do not get to choose the political environment. The best ones — those who get the top job — do so by setting out a compelling vision for the country they seek to lead.
So the question Starmer must answer is simple. In a post-Covid, post-Brexit era, in which the Tories appear to have stolen Labour’s clothes and are pursuing a big government agenda, what is Labour for?
