What is the point of Keir Starmer? He was the means by which the Labour party could suffocate the hard left and assume the mantle of respectability and, in due course, power. But he lacked, and has never acquired, a governing philosophy. He was handed a landslide by an electorate determined to eject the Conservatives from office with ruthless force. Yet he has contrived to forfeit the authority it lent him and now rivals the government he supplanted in unpopularity and lack of direction.

The men and women who engineered his ascent to the leadership, and delivered the majority he has acquired but does not command, have always known his limitations. The ideological flexibility, and ambition, which allowed him to serve in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet without ever believing in Jeremy Corbyn

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