Having lost a seat that Corbyn outperformed him in twice, it’s Starmer who looks like the less than competent politician now
Blind panic. That’s the generous way to describe the expression etched on the face of Hartlepool’s Labour candidate when I visited the constituency and asked him the most basic question of all: what was his party’s vision for the country? He spluttered, rejected the premise of the question, and threw in platitudes about attracting the best businesses to this County Durham port town by improving child literacy.
This is not to slight Paul Williams, undoubtedly a talented GP rather than a miracle worker who can conjure up a vision for his party where none exists. Tony Benn once said there were two types of politician: a signpost and a weathervane. It would be unfair to describe Keir Starmer as the latter, because weathervanes are at least known to point, however fleetingly, in a direction. Today, we saw the fruits of a truly fascinating experiment: what happens when a political party fights an election campaign without a vision or a coherent message against a government that has both in spades. And truly, it was a bitter result.
