Keir Starmer isn’t Labour’s biggest problem

Keir Starmer has turned a drama into a crisis. The local elections were always going to be difficult for Labour. The government is enjoying the political dividend of the vaccine rollout, and approval for its handling of the Covid crisis is now back to where it was a month into the first national lockdown. Much of the world is still struggling, but Britain has the lowest Covid levels in Europe and Boris Johnson’s approval rating is far higher as a result. He triumphed, and Labour struggled. But Starmer made this so much worse by his actions before and after polling day.

The first error was to hold the Hartlepool by-election on the same day as the local elections. Not only did this mean that the previously unknown Tory candidate could associate themselves with the hugely popular Tory mayor of the Tees Valley, who was up for re-election, but also that the Hartlepool result would set the political narrative.