When Sir Keir Starmer recently shared a platform with Sir Tony Blair, the former prime minister congratulated the aspirant one for doing an “amazing job” by rescuing Labour from “the brink of extinction” and leading it to “the brink of government”. That compliment sounded all the more lavish to those who knew how agitated Sir Tony used to be about Labour’s prospects. Just two years ago, in the wake of Labour’s morale-crushing defeat in the Hartlepool byelection, some of the most ardent Blairites even discussed abandoning all hope in Labour by launching a new party to be led by Sir Tony. What sounds fantastical today was talked about quite seriously back then. It is a mark of the advances that Labour has made in the time since that Sir Tony now gives his benedictions and blessings to Sir Keir.
Most people assume he will win the general election, but we have just seen that the path to power is strewn with trip hazards and Labour stumbled over one of them in Uxbridge. Before I get to that, first the good news for Sir Keir’s party from the trio of byelections on Thursday. The victory in Selby and Ainsty was a stunner. The win in North Yorkshire was the biggest numerical Conservative majority overturned by Labour since 1945 and the second largest swing from the Tories to Labour in postwar history. It usually spells doom for the incumbents when they suffer a byelection defeat that colossal. This result was reminiscent of the stonking Labour byelection wins that the party clocked up in the 1990s when Sir Tony was leading the party towards his first landslide victory.
