But I don’t think harking back to the past is helpful whatever ones proclivities
I disagree. It's a useful reminder of the task that still awaits Starmer and the Labour party. The 2019 general election was arguably the most catastrophic in the Labour party's history. The worse since 1935, but at least in 1935 we were building our vote and had a credible leader (Attlee). Once Starmer took over after the election he was faced with leading a party that had lost credibility with huge parts of the electorate. The Scots had abandoned it, the North and West Midlands had lost faith, and many ardent Remainers felt alienated too. The party under Corbyn (and the weird assortment of former-Communists and Trotskyists in his inner circle) was associated in the public mind with extremism and strange, irrelevant, causes. Even the leader's Lenin cap made ordinary Labour voters suspicious. In a way it was meant to. "I'm dangerous and bit batty", it said, "A man of October 1917". Of course we all know he was nothing of the kind. He was
playing. But playing can have a big effect on the public mind too.
To develop amnesia about all that is dangerous. It sets up false expectations of what Starmer can do and how far he can dictate terms. The electorate do not
love Labour. Many still haven't forgiven it for the turn it took under Corbyn. The Scots are still a little enchanted with the SNP experiment. There is still a careful balancing act to be performed to reconcile Labour's progressive voters and her socially-conservative ones.
It's great that Labour leads so handsomely in the polls. But it's a fragile lead I think. This isn't 1945. The massed battalions of the organised working class have not been radicalised by a world war. Socialism doesn't loom in the nation's mind as an obvious and radiant future. Under the circumstances Starmer is doing well. I thought the damage of Corbyn might be terminal. It doesn't appear to be. We can all rejoice at that.
