In the past he has been urged to follow strategies that don’t really match his core beliefs. That’s changing, as it must, because he knows the clock is ticking
Tom Baldwin is the author of Keir Starmer, The Biography
In a crowded and overheated bar towards the end of the evening a few months ago, I received some strange parenting advice from one of those “Labour strategist” types.
We were discussing – maybe arguing – over the government’s position on Gaza. Eventually I asked if he could provide me with a decent explanation to give my son who had shown me stuff on his phone a couple of days earlier about how Israeli army officers were still being trained by Britain’s military. “Here’s what you say to your son,” began his reply, followed by a portentous pause that made me lean in closer. “You should tell him to fuck off.”
To be clear, I’m not recalling this episode now just to have a dig at someone who has usually seemed one of the nicer ones. And doubtless he would say I was irritating him in all kinds of ways. Nonetheless, the exchange strikes me as symptomatic of an attitude to a whole swathe of voters who have been taken for granted by Labour for far too long.
