What does Starmer actually stand for?

The biggest reason Keir Starmer has proved a flop is not that he leads an unelectable rabble, or that Labour’s coalition of voters is splintering, or even that Covid has marginalised him — it is far simpler: He’s never known what to do.

In fact, he lacks the first clue about how to do politics. High-powered lawyer he may once have been, but we might as well have pulled some random middle-class bloke out of a saloon car on a ring road and invited him to captain Britain’s next doomed attempt to win the America’s Cup yachting challenge. Because Starmer’s default pose is to be frozen at the wheel and staring blankly at a mysterious instrument panel as his crew awaits orders. He has thus always been doomed to catch a crab rather than the wind in his sails.

His lack of basic knowledge about how to go about building an offer the British people might find attractive — let alone compelling — is by turns extraordinary and excruciating.