Sir Keir Starmer is planning a policy review as part of his plans to ‘change’ Labour after the dismal Super Thursday results. This sounds, to put it mildly, like a rather small response to a rather big problem.
Talking to MPs and campaigners over the past 24 hours, I have noticed a shift in the way many of them describe Labour’s challenge. The Hartlepool result has underlined that the party’s recovery hasn’t yet started, and that it is going to be a very, very long time before that recovery can take the party back into government.
Starmer could become a Kinnock-esque figure, who might merely prepare the ground for another leader who wins.
The scale of the defeat is one reason for this shift in mindset, but another is the way in which Labour’s support in Hartlepool has been declining for a couple of decades. There is no evidence that recovering that support can happen overnight.
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