That Starmer fella...

I guess I reject the idea that moving a bit in one direction means no longer being 'for' the left. It's a question of degree, so if they were entirely throwing away labour policy then I'd accept this, but I don't think they are - it feels like the left of the party aren't used to not getting their way.

Totally fair. It's pretty hard to tell where they're trying to move at the moment. What you do see, however, is Starmer distancing himself from the left. If this becomes a firmer position, and a move towards being centrist rather than left, this will have a knock-on effect on voters as we've seen it in the past. Again, I understand the strategy, the strategy is logical, but it's not without risks.

And beyond strategy, there are normative issues many may have with the approach, which leads to:

Maybe I don't mean democratic legitimacy - not saying that a majority view is illegitimate. But stable and preferential? Yes, I do think that. The more a party is happy taking positions which are closer to the middle ground, the less the chance there is that anything enacted (if they get in power) is then simply changed again when they lose power. I think that stability is an important and good thing, and (as we've seen with brexit) nudging over 50% to pass something that also has huge opposition is not a recipe for balanced, good politics

I agree that centrist parties can result in stable governments, but they also, largely, perpetuate the status quo. That's the point about stability. However, I don't think the status quo is sustainable. People are getting poorer, the environment is getting shitter, racism and sexism and ablism and other forms of injustice continue. People will make these things a priority in their voting preferences. Brexit wasn't (only) a result of non-centrist political beliefs. Those political beliefs were directly the outcome of decades of the status quo. In this was, centrist parties will only push people towards extremes.