The Tightening Net

And there you have it. In the current climate, Labour has made a net gain of 22 seats in England. Twenty-two. It experienced net losses in seven London Boroughs, and it lost three of the poorest, in one case directly to a party of the Left, while winning three of the richest, none of which it had ever won under Tony Blair. It has taken the present Leadership to make Labour the party of Mayfair but not of Medomsley.

Labour's vote in London was down on 2018. It did not have a good election in London and a bad one everywhere else. It had a bad election in London and a disastrous one everywhere else, at least in England. In Scotland, albeit from a very low base, it is true that the extremely right-wing Labour Party did make some progress. But that is not directly run by Keir Starmer. Nor is the Labour Party in Wales, which continues to be led by the Corbynite Mark Drakeford, and which won handily.

Even without the later revelation that Starmer was back under Police investigation, he has always been the problem. The Police were in a difficult position over whether or not to reveal that earlier, but most people do seem to think that the decision not to do so stinks to high heaven. From today's Mail on Sunday, it is clear beyond doubt that Starmer is bang to rights for a Fixed Penalty Notice of £10,000. The credibility of the Police now depends on that. The warders at Durham could make a fortune by raffling the chance to be Starmer's cellmate. "He was the Director of Public Prosecutions, you know."

The Left should stay out of any Labour Leadership Election. Just let them fight it out. Wes Streeting, Mr NHS Privatisation. Yvette Cooper, the Wicked Witch of the Work Capability Assessment. Rachel Reeves, another hater of the disabled, and with a CV featuring both the Bank of England and the British Embassy in Washington, making her the embodiment of Britain's permanent economic and foreign policy of austerity and war, impervious to mere elections.

Any of them would suit down to the ground those of us who wanted even only 10 or 12 MPs to hold the balance of power in 2024, or at least by 2029, in the cause of strengthening families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty.