So bad was the debut of this Labour government that many think it has already failed. But now, I suggest, there is at least a chance it will succeed. If it leads industrial recovery based on defence and security, tackles the flawed basis of large areas of welfare spending and sweeps away planning restrictions to build more, it will have confronted problems which the Tories evaded for years. Labour can do this, of course, only if it abjures the beliefs that Sir Keir Starmer has espoused throughout his political career, but that seems to be exactly what his managers, led by Morgan McSweeney, are now (rightly) forcing upon him.
Rupert Lowe is not the first Lowe to split Reform. In the 1860s, Robert Lowe, a gifted, virtually blind Liberal politician, who deserves lasting fame for having enshrined in law the joint stock limited liability company, broke with Gladstone over Reform (always referred to with that initial capital). To the Victorians, Reform meant reform of the franchise. Gladstone was thus stymied and it fell to Disraeli, stealing the Liberals’ clothes, to introduce the 1867 Reform Bill. Lowe and friends were called the Adullamites, being compared to David and his followers hiding from King Saul in the Cave of Adullam. David, says the Bible, ‘gathered every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and everyone that was discontented… and he became a captain over them’. Presumably, Rupert Lowe will attempt something similar with Reform supporters. And Kemi Badenoch, if she can, will make herself the Disraeli of the situation and profit from the falling out of Saul (Nigel Farage) with David.
I may have given too much credit to Graham Usher, the Bishop of Norwich, as a suitable candidate to be Archbishop of Canterbury.
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