Imagine a party. It’s not going well. The Levellers are playing on a loop, the vegan nibbles are untouched, and half the guests have wandered off.
So you take over the stereo and slap on some mainstream rock. Pop open the Pringles, flourish some red meat, tell everyone “let’s make this a REAL party!” People start wandering back. They’re maybe not quite convinced – some bloke called Nigel has a pub lock-in down the road, and the sound of Quo is thumping through the shrubbery – but they’ll give it a whirl, for now.
So you head to the kitchen, where you realise the place is a mess and you should have planned ahead to bring gloves and matches. Rachel can’t locate the powerhouse, Wes has his head in the oven and Angela is complaining bitterly, having just realised the shopping bag contains vegetarian sausages and some special offer mayonnaise.
You pop your head round the door to see how it’s going, and someone’s put Morrissey on. The sofas are filled with row-energy resentment, and someone asks you for a minicab number. From the front door comes the sound of laughter, and when you push through the guests you see Jezza having a screaming row with Zarah in the front garden. It spills down the street, and half the party follows just to see what happens next.
This is where Keir Starmer now finds himself – leader of a party few people were that convinced by, drained of oomph, wondering why no-one wants his non-alcoholic, not-much-punch. Other parties are starting up left, right, and further right, with irresponsible offerings, nerve-shattering sound levels, and 100% more vibrancy.
There is only one thing that works in this situation. And what Keir needs to do for the Labour Party is the same thing Jeremy Corbyn did just by talking about having a new party: make things more interesting.
Were the metaphor to extend this far down the page, it would have to involve a current affairs equivalent of putting on Primal Scream and breaking out the vodka. Instead, we’ve got wall-to-wall cuts, u-turns, a narrative of failure, gloom and irreversible decline. It’s like watching Milli Vanilli when their CD got stuck.
Keir got rid of Jeremy once, and it did make his party more attractive to the mainstream voter. But that was 5 years ago, when people were desperate to be done with the hurly-burly of Boris and Brexit. A professional capable of combing his hair was always going to be the last man standing, but he was never going to be the best person to hold the attention of a public attuned to clickbait and chaos.
Enter Nigel, stage right, and Jeremy, stage left. Both of them formed from splinters of mainstream parties that the voter fell out of love with, both occupying a radical niche, and both capable of causing division quicker than the Large Hadron Collider. Nigel of course is popular and on course to be PM, if you believe Nigel and forget that no-one’s questioned him properly yet. Jeremy is a tried-and-tested failure at the ballot box, but that’s not to say his time won’t come: when the centrists fail, the extremes arise.
Nigel’s outfit is tainted by a near-total lack of fact-checking, both in who it recruits and what it says. Jeremy’s managed the amazing feat of splintering his split, with his cohort Zarah Sultana announcing it before there was a name, and reportedly before Jeremy was ready. Nigel always argues with comrades and flounces out. Corbyn always ignores what he doesn’t like. None of it matters: both men are magnets to the mentally ill, and these days, just about everybody is.
If Keir wants to know what’s next, he could do no better than gaze across the Despatch Box to Kemi Badenoch, where a desultory leader is detached from reality and apparently unfazed by the growing threat to her flank. Wannabes are turning into social media vigilantes in the vacuum of her total lack of energy, ideas, or approachability.
The same will happen to Keir if he doesn’t buck up. Angela will arm, Wes will weaponise, and Rachel will become his Kwasi Kwarteng, the failed Chancellor desperately trying to pour some common sense in his ear.
But the only thing that will work is the political equal of proper music, and proper food – a wealth tax, a National Care Service, a pandemic plan, a Hillsborough Law to end national scandals, chunky electric vehicle subsidies, solar panels for every roof paid for by the National Grid, employer incentives to get the disabled into work and, for the love of Pete, some NHS parity for mental health services because if you’re not depressed yet, then you’ve not been paying attention.
Radical policies, wealth redistribution, a super-rich level of inheritance tax, a Robin Hood tax and a few of the things the Left have wanged on about for years but which the mainstream will happily swallow will see off the threat of Corbyn, and move Labour narrative onto firmer ground. It is doubtful, though, whether someone who has tacked so far to the right on immigration, crime and the economy is capable of tacking the other way. And could his job withstand what would inevitably be packaged, by Nigel and Jeremy, as a capitulation to the loonies?
There’s risk on all sides. All that’s keeping Starmer in post is that his party is disappointed, rather than angry, and that could change at conference in autumn. He needs to realise people are thirsty for something he’s not giving them, and then he has to decide whether he will deliver it.
My bet? History shows he goes with the flow. A vegetarian who’s prepared to dish up raw steak, a manager quite able to cause dysfunction, an apolitical politician leading a party of idealists while not having any ideas. I suspect it’ll be left a bit, right a bit, left a bit more, before someone finally takes pity and gets him a cab home.