Member-only story
Should we afford Keir Starmer his first 100 days?
Part of the old ward or betrayal of the Left?
To say that Corbyn was less than an icon for the Labour party would be an inexcusable understatement, but his time has now passed, and we need to accept that Labour is not today what it was in 2017. There is now a new road ahead of all of us in the UK -Labour supporter or not- under Sir Keir Starmer as the new leader of the Labour party. Unsurprisingly, and with only a few days in, we have already seen some Labour supporters swearing their political activism against the new leader. But what most activists are forgetting is that despite his centrist stance, he is the closest they would get to a Corbyn Labour without completely losing their shot at government at the next election.
Rebecca Long-Bailey was the preferred Momentum candidate, but the mistake Momentum always made was the same that all populist movements have. They are a fashion and seem incapable of reinventing themselves. Perhaps their message is so tectonically solid that trying to improve it can be considered treacherous. Even Nigel Farage had to rebrand himself in another party so he could dissociate from UKIP and managed a second populist hit.
But let’s get back to Keir and Corbyn. They both got to be leaders under the new Milliband rules. It does not matter what Corbyn supporters believe because…
