The Labour leader is in trouble. His party has been cast adrift from its moorings in the working-class and is languishing in opposition. He has tried to drag Labour towards electability, but so far, his only reward has been members’ hostility and plots for his removal. If his Conservative counterpart, safe in No. 10, is hardly impressive, the voters seem to like him much more: 48 per cent see the Labour leader as simply ‘boring’ and many aren’t even sure what he stands for.
This is not a pen portrait of Keir Starmer. It is, instead, a description of George Jones, David Hare’s fictional Labour leader, and the protagonist of his 1993 play The Absence of War. However, while Jones is not real, he has more than a passing resemblance to then-Labour leader Neil Kinnock.
Wisely or not, and on Kinnock’s instigation, during the 1992 election period Labour allowed Hare access to its top-level strategy meetings.
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