If Keir Starmer is ousted, Labour could still win the next election. Here’s how that would work | Larry Elliott

Once a PM is seen as hapless, there is no way back. But Labour has good plans – and with the political landscape fragmented, it could yet prevail

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n the summer of 1992 John Major was riding high. Selling himself as the everyman leader voters could relate to, Margaret Thatcher’s successor as prime minister had just won an election against the odds and had a few months when all seemed well.

Then Black Wednesday happened, the 1992 sterling crisis, and after George Soros and his fellow speculators ousted Britain from the European exchange rate mechanism it was never the same again. Major became the man with the reverse Midas touch. He could do nothing right. He became a figure of fun. The press was merciless.

Keir Starmer is the new John Major. True, there has been nothing as totemic as Black Wednesday in the past 18 months, merely a drip feed of bad news.