On a fine morning in Tooting last Wednesday, the Labour tribe, Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan among them, gathered to pay its final respects to one of its winners. Margaret McDonagh had been number two in the party at the time of the 1997 election victory and the general-secretary for the 2001 landslide, which more or less repeated the arithmetic of the previous victory. In his tribute to Margaret at the funeral, Tony Blair made the point that politics without power was just dreaming and Margaret McDonagh was never content to dream.
This same message was delivered on Saturday by Starmer at the Labour party National Policy Forum in Nottingham. Starmer quoted Aneurin Bevan, always a useful ally for a tough argument, to the effect that “only by the possession of power can you get the priorities correct”. A 23 per cent swing gave Selby and Ainsty, a strong Tory seat in North Yorkshire, a Labour MP at the by-election on Thursday. All the talk in the Labour party now is of power and how to get the priorities right.
