Keir Starmer’s fundamental problem

Half a century ago, Willie Whitelaw accused Harold Wilson of ‘going around the country stirring up apathy’. I can think of no finer description to apply to Keir Starmer’s summer tour of Britain, during which we are told he intends to listen to the concerns of voters in a bid to win back their trust.

His first such excursion, on which he was accompanied by BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, saw him encounter a dozen former Labour voters in Blackpool. Several of them confided that they had never heard of him, a revelation he described as ‘utterly frustrating’.

Ms Kuenssberg reported that the gathering gave Starmer quite a rough ride with some in attendance telling him he was ‘wasting his time’. The issue of anti-Semitism within Labour came up too and she later pressed him further on whether Jeremy Corbyn may be allowed back into the parliamentary party.

‘To turn this into an argument about Jeremy Corbyn is to do exactly what I want the Labour party to stop doing,’ said Sir Keir.