I left thinking he might be a great Labour prime minister, perhaps even a Clem Attlee figure, and that’s what I told readers of what was then called The New European. Then I watched as he allowed Peter Mandelson to vet Labour’s candidates for the general election, needlessly handing the Chingford and Woodford Green constituency to the Tories because Faiza Shaheen – the sort of fluent and passionate young politician whom Labour needs – did not meet Mandelson’s standards of ideological purity.
I watched him unnecessarily provoke war with the party’s left, take fright every time he did something a little radical, reward loyalty not talent in his cabinet appointments, fire Sue Gray to make more room for Morgan McSweeney, push aside a respected and accomplished diplomat in Washington to make room for Mandelson, and all the rest. I have seen the stick of wood night after night on television.
I think now that Starmer is the best sort of radical lawyer, with few political skills, who subcontracted his political thinking to the Mandelson clique. And they have destroyed him.
