You are reading a single comment by @frank9755 and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
-
Everyone knows that Corbyn ultimately failed, so surely it's the wrong benchmark. And as you point out, Blair is the only one who has won, so why is that not the relevant bar?
The '20 points ahead thing' was started by Blair. It was a daft thing to say as (even) he was never 20 points ahead.
Starmer was given the benefit of the doubt. That was why he won. 40% of the people who voted for Corbyn both times voted for him. It's his performance over the last year which has turned a signifcant proportion of those people against him.
Let's hope the criticism of the last couple of weeks has stung him into upping his game. I hope today's speech goes down well.
frank9755
When Corbyn loyalists are saying that Starmer is doing a bad job, it's absolutely relevant to mention how much better Starmer is doing by every available metric (not vote share, btw, Starmer doesn't have a metric on that yet) than the guy they'd prefer to run the party. It's also a counter to people using that tired old 'any decent party would be 20 points ahead' meme; we ARE 20 points ahead compared to where we started. Any time someone says 'Kieth should be 20 points ahead lol' I will point this out.
I think that's partially reasonable - but it's more often used as a rhetorical device to set Starmer up to fail. Blair is the only Labour leader in the last 45 years to have won one election, let alone three of them. Every other leader is doing badly vs Blair.
As far as I'm concerned Starmer is doing OK. No better, no worse. I think this speech today is overdue, but I understand why he's been reticent to put it out there. I also think he deserves a fair crack of the whip, and many Corbyn loyalists aren't prepared to give him that.