Can Labour Win the next Election? I’d Bet on a Hung Parliament
Keir Starmer’s leadership has started well, but the 2019 election result left Labour with a mountain to climb and scaling it may well prove impossible
Keir Starmer is the most popular Labour leader since Tony Blair. Every single poll of net satisfaction since he became leader has been positive. In his first 100 days as leader he has more than halved the Tory poll lead, which peaked at 26 percentage points but has fallen to single digits in most recent polls. He was elected with a strong mandate in the leadership election — winning over the most MPs, constituency associations and affiliates, and crucially, winning the support of a majority of Labour Party members on the first ballot.
The government are in the middle of the biggest public health crisis since the Spanish Flu and the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression and they are led by a Prime Minister without principle, whose grasp of detail is often embarrassing and whose absence during key stages of this crisis has been glaringly apparent. Keir Starmer’s skill as a QC is serving him well during Prime Minister’s Questions, where the description of him as ‘forensic’ has been so apt that it’s now regarded as a cliché. This has allowed him to dictate…
