What Starmer can learn from Miliband’s mug

Since becoming Labour leader, Keir Starmer has single-mindedly been trying to persuade red wall voters that Labour is ‘patriotic’, just like them. He thereby hopes to clear away those cultural barriers that have arisen between Labour in the north and midlands where voting for the party used to be almost instinctive. As he said in his first leader’s speech back in September, Starmer wants red wall voters to ‘take another look’ at Labour now it is under his leadership: he wants to show them that it is no longer the party of Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters.

But many in his party don’t like what Starmer is doing, because a significant number of Labour members — being middle class and university-educated — are not just like red wall voters. At the moment the party is arguing over Starmer’s use of the Union flag but this is a disagreement that goes deeper than which adornment the Labour leader should stand next to when making a speech.