IT would not be impossible to conclude – after a little more than a week of election campaigning – that Labour just aren’t much cop at this politics lark.
Straight out the gate with a soaring poll lead, the party decided to do what they do best - get into a bloody and destructive factional war.
To the uninitiated – meaning most reasonable people who have never been members of Labour’s warring tribes – these are incomprehensible.
I am a member of the uninitiated, so I cannot shine any special light on why, just as power is within reach, Labour allowed a blazing row over the fate of Diane Abbott (below) - the first black woman elected to Parliament and one of the country’s biggest political names - to overshadow their election campaign.
I also cannot explain why they dumped Faiza Shaheen, a perfectly respectable candidate with a braw CV, just as they began parachuting people like Luke Akehurst – who believes the United Nations is antisemitic – into safe seats.
There is a Twitter/X account I like run by the historian Ewan Gibbs who regularly shares a meme cautioning people against caring about the contemporary Labour Party, saying they should focus on nuancing the history of the Labour Party.
It is my sorry lot in life that I am forced to care about the contemporary Labour Party.
And so to Greenock, where the contemporary Labour Party were giving it big licks about their plans for Great British Energy – previously touted as a publicly-owned energy company.
It will, Keir Starmer (above) announced, with all the nous of Rishi Sunak cancelling HS2 in Manchester, not be an energy company.
Instead it will take public money and inject it into the private sector in the hopes of creating some green jobs. An investment vehicle, is what Keir Starmer calls it.
Because Labour famously have a great record when it comes to mixing public money and private enterprise.
Please, contain your excitement – we’ve still got five weeks of this to go …
