Touring the Sunday morning political shows, the health secretary, Wes Streeting, compared Labour’s capitulation in Caerphilly last week to its notorious defeat in Hartlepool in a 2021 byelection – a humiliation that led Sir Keir Starmer to contemplate resigning as party leader. Now as then, Mr Streeting suggested, a historic rout in a heartland seat should compel Labour to change the “pace and scale” of its ambition.
It is a superficially plausible analogy, but one to treat with care. Four years ago, Hartlepool confirmed the view of influential figures around Sir Keir that if Labour was to succeed it would be through ruthlessly expunging the leftish influence of most of its members, in favour of a top‑down, centralised approach. The politics that subsequently emerged was technocratic, cautious to a fault and contemptuous of those who dared to remain within a supposed “ideological comfort zone”.
