Considering Our Position

Make what you will of the decision not to reveal the investigation into Keir Starmer until yesterday, but there was no way that it began on Monday. Starmer's claim on Sunday that Durham Police had not been in touch was a barefaced lie. Nor could public knowledge of this investigation have made Labour's electoral performance any worse.

The Conservatives have taken the Mayoralty in Croydon, Lutfur Rahman has taken back the Mayoralty in Tower Hamlets, and the Conservatives have taken control of Harrow. At best, then, Labour's capture of Westminster, Wandsworth and Barnet has added up only to a net zero result even in London.

Labour's strong showing in Wales was under Mark Drakeford, and therefore constituted a direct riposte to the Starmer Leadership. Labour has lost control of Hastings, which is the more Labour part of a key marginal constituency. It has lost seats in Hartlepool. It has lost two longstanding seats in Hilary Benn's constituency of Leeds Central, pointedly one to the SDP and the other to the Greens. In South Tyneside, the Greens have taken one seat from Labour and one from the Conservatives, which may well also be a sign of things to come. As may the fact that Labour has lost control of Hull to the Liberal Democrats. And so on.

At 35 per cent, Labour's projected share of the national vote was only the same as in 2018, but even that is not a real total of real votes. Sir John Curtice's best guess may be a lot more reliable than yours or mine, but it is still only his best guess. The real total of real votes has Labour down on where it was under Jeremy Corbyn, who is nevertheless being blamed. That is not as funny as it sounds. He is no longer sitting as a Labour MP, so what would be the solution to "Long Corbyn"? His death? Would even that suffice? If not, then what would?

Oh, well, onwards to the Leadership of Wes Streeting or Yvette Cooper. As the metropolitan liberal elite personified, stepping over beggars to state his pronouns, Streeting would be a low-hanging fruit, and he held his seat by only 5,198 votes last time. But Cooper held hers by only 1,276, and she is the Wicked Witch of the Work Capability Assessment, with the blood of hundreds of thousands on her hands. Imagine that the Leader of the Opposition were to lose her own seat. To disabled people, as to BAME and GRT people, the Labour Party is now an active menace, an existential threat, a mortal danger.

But a hung Parliament now looks highly likely, and Labour is so deluded that it assumes that 10 or 12 MPs in favour of economic equality and international peace would have to give it at least confidence and supply because we were family, or in the same club, or on the same team, or something. We are not, so we would not. 10 DUP MPs got £100 million per vote out of an unusually scrupulous Prime Minister. Imagine what we could get out of some school or university clique whose only political principle was that it deserved to be the Government by birthright.