In Their Prime?

Keir Starmer's school may only have gone private while he was there, and he may only have gone up to Oxford to read for a second degree, but he is the most "Prime Ministerial" candidate available to lead the Labour Party, so he is going to win.

There have only ever been six Labour Prime Ministers. Two of them never won a General Election, one of those never went to a university, and the other was one of the extremely few Prime Ministers to have held degrees but not Oxbridge ones. Cambridge is also fairly unusual.

Of the four Labour Leaders who have won General Elections, two have been public schoolboys, and three have been Oxford graduates. The British know what they like. And they know what they do not like.

They will cut the Conservative Party a certain amount of slack, although not really all that much. But a Labour Leader has to be strictly "Prime Ministerial" or face the consequences even if, as in the cases of Jim Callaghan and Gordon Brown, he is already Prime Minister. On the day before the 1997 General Election, no one alive had ever led Labour to victory.

It is psephologically impossible for Labour to win the 2024 General Election. So when Starmer has lost it, then he will be succeeded by the perfectly "Prime Ministerial" figure of a public school Oxonian without complication. There will be no shortage of those in the 2024 Labour intake, such as that is going to be. 

Labour will then have to hope for a repetition of 2001 and 2005, when the Conservatives pushed their luck by putting up Leaders who, while cleverer than Tony Blair and in Michael Howard's case more experienced, were nowhere near as "Prime Ministerial"; for a reverse of 2010, when a thoroughly seasoned and hardened Labour Prime Minister was brushed aside for a completely untested, but eminently "Prime Ministerial", Leader of the Conservative Party.

You do not have to take any part is this. I will be standing for Parliament again here at North West Durham next time, so please give generously. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.