Thread by @forwardnotback

The Labour Party: A thread
Starmer has been leader for just over a year and in true Labour Party tradition members (and supporters) are getting restless, well if you look at Twitter they are!
We need to go back to December 2019 to start the discussion

It wasn’t simply a crushing election defeat, that was the result of something much worse, the loss of trust, our own rejection of our most recent achievements in government and the turning of a political party into a social club or debating society

Starmer (or whoever replaced Corbyn) was inheriting a hollowed out mess posing as a political party
Community organisers replacing election organisers, rallies more important that voter ID and contact
But away from the organisational issues we had done a ‘reverse Cameron’

We had in many voters eyes become the ‘nasty party’ from the Salisbury murders to understanding aspiration we weren’t just on the wrong side of the argument, we were talking in a language people didn’t understand and when it was translated they didn’t like it

So Starmer not only had to work with others to sort out the organisational issues, he had to deal with the image of the party, the leadership and pick up a parliamentary team that were depleted in numbers and were TH low morale

Across the dispatch box he faced a man the public and many labour activists had been calling Bojo or Boris for years, a character created over many years, a false image but the character now had an 80 seat majority
Forgive me while I laugh at those who claimed back in 2015

That Johnson (Boris/Bojo) couldn’t win outside of London, many of those people are now attacking Starmer
So back to Labour, a new general secretary, some new faces on the NEC but the remains of the last regime remain and still control important parts of the elected party

The criticism of Starmer and some of his front bench ignores most of that
It ignores the politics of a UK battered by a deadly virus
It ignores why we suffered such a crushing defeat
Opposition is hard work, the bigger the government majority the harder it becomes

The opinion polls are generally better than a year ago, but they need to move and Starmer knows that
We have a front bench settling down and getting on with their job
We are seeing policy ideas starting to materialise
We appear to be listening and moving in the right direction

So what does Starmer do in the next year
Firstly he needs to stick with being himself, resist the calls to be a bit more ‘bantz’
Reject suggestions that we can’t win
Keep talking about aspiration
Allow his frontbenchers to continue to develop
Once lockdown is over...

....people will get to know them
But most of all remember that he has a mandate to lead and he should continue to use it but leading is also about using others, we are a party not a one man band
Everything is about 2024

One year down and the report reads “has made some progress, but needs to use this next year to move from his comfort zone”

And if he makes any front bench changes it should be to the health team