Rejoining the EU, massive tax reform, scrapping the pension triple lock – a new leader must summon a sense of emergency and deal with the big issues
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abour is in the deepest trouble. A juicy leadership drama ignites all Westminster-watchers, another spellbinding live-action theatre of rising and falling stars, duels, betrayals of trust, new alliances and old ones broken.
Some would pull back from this vortex. Is regicide absolutely necessary when “stability” is what people and markets say they want and vox pops groan, “Not another one!” After less than two years, with worse turmoil ahead from the Trump war, now, really?
Whatever comes of Wes Streeting’s attempt to trigger a contest, this sixth game of thrones for No 10 in a decade is inevitable and unavoidable. Labour has to confront what voters said deafeningly in the local elections: not Labour and, crushingly, not Keir Starmer. He is in that bourn from which no traveller returns: political death. No one ever came back from such public rejection. Ignoring it is not an option, just wishful thinking. As Mark Carney famously warned, “Hope is not a plan, nostalgia is not a strategy.” Labour needs a plan and a strategy, a chance to start again with candidates laying out their maps and their melodies.
