The thrust of Andrew Fisher’s lament about Keir Starmer’s performance seems to be that even though Labour has a 20-point opinion poll lead, he is boring and unable to generate the crowd enthusiasm that Jeremy Corbyn did, either prior to losing the 2017 election or the more crushing defeat of 2019 (Where’s Labour’s fervour? Can you imagine a crowd chanting ‘Oh, Keir Starmer’?, 14 December).
He fails to point out that at no time during this period of apparent adulation did Corbyn maintain any significant poll lead. In the bigger scheme of things, the polls and the election results were in alignment. Fisher is right that Labour’s current poll lead may shrink and the result of the next general election is far from assured. But possibly two years away from that moment, given a choice between a crowd chanting “Oh, Keir Starmer” and a sizeable and sustained poll lead, I know which I’d opt for.
Richard Skues
Winchmore Hill, London
• Andrew Fisher suggests that Labour’s polling under Keir Starmer’s leadership might be fragile. It might yet prove to have been a mirage. In the months leading to the 1997 election, Tony Blair was enjoying himself in making the claim that Labour could run a capitalist economy better than the Tories.
There was no risk in making this suggestion, any more than there would have been in standing on a solidly socialist platform – Labour was aiming at an open goal. In the much more unstable political and social climate that we have today, hemmed in by international fault lines that we can do little to influence, no Labour leader could take such a relaxed centrist position and expect to win.
If Starmer wants to be a middle-ground contender, let him try – but not as leader of the Labour party. He has no right, no mandate and no grassroots support to turn a party built upon socialist ethics into Britain’s second-eleven establishment grouping.
Michael Bowers
Talgarth, Powys
• I have one question for Andrew Fisher: where did fervour get Jeremy Corbyn? Politics is not about entertainment or excitement, and high membership figures do not correlate to election results. I know that those who supported Corbyn are disappointed, but this is nothing like the disappointment felt by many Labour party members when Corbyn became leader. We had to watch the disaster unfold in slow motion.
From my corner of the world, people out on the doorstep report great support for Labour. No one has reported that voters are demanding more fervour. What they are is very tired, worried and fearful of a future with a continuing Tory government.
Val Stevens
Mytholmroyd, West Yorkshire
• Andrew Fisher’s likening of Keir Starmer to George Graham and his “boring, boring” Arsenal team is wrong. In 1988-89, that team won nine games (eight of them away) scoring three or more goals, and won the title. Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle were popular and won nothing. Give me boring anytime.
Colin Price
Tonbridge, Kent
• No, I can’t imagine a crowd singing “Oh, Keir Starmer”, but not in my wildest dreams could I imagine the speaker announcing “prime minister Jeremy Corbyn”.
Paddy Eckersley
Woodbridge, Suffolk
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