I should start by saying that I’m not anti-Labour for the sake of it. To give one example, I think Labour’s right to ease overcrowding in prisons and to look seriously at prison and sentencing policy.
But I do think that this government is a lot further left than Blair ever was. Particularly over the economy, the public sector and unions’ rights.
And many of its backbenchers have picked up left-Labour attitudes, despite Corbyn. Starmer has no coherent philosophy so he flails around in the face of party discontent when he does try something economically mildly sensible. Which just encourages the belief on the backbenches that they can get what they want.
It also leads to terrible dishonesty because he’s always having to justify changes of position. Which for a party mired in hypocrisy anyway, is a fatal combination.
Every time I hear him say “we’ve got to get this right” after a humiliating u-turn forced on him only by gangs of Labour MPs it makes me gag.