If the Starmer project has a guiding philosophy, it goes like this: Labour must define itself against the left. If a speech or policy offends the left, then good. If a candidate on the party’s left makes it through, they should be marginalised or purged. Within the electorate, leftwing voters are seen as irrelevant, because they’ll vote Labour no matter what to keep the Tories out, with those votes stacking up in safe urban seats.
Starmer’s cheerleaders may well conclude that this strategy still holds. After all, Labour has secured a landslide victory, and the Tories have suffered their most shattering defeat since they were founded in their modern form 190 years ago. Indeed, in our democratic history, no electoral rout has been more deserved. The evidence was everywhere, from an unparalleled squeeze in living standards to Liz Truss’s deranged attempt to turn Britain into a laboratory for hard-right economics; from a collapsing NHS to the repeated clobbering of the young.
