So then: Keir Starmer. How's he doing? This thread's gonna be interesting for the ratio it might receive ... or otherwise.

Because I think he's doing pretty well, all things considered. And I say that despite accepting at least some of the criticism of him.

So much so that early last month, I wrote an article questioning plenty of things he was doing. Here:

https://medium.com/@shaunjlawson/an-open-letter-to-keir-starmer-76c2864b6c5b?source=friends_link&sk=36114f341b72b30596d8b6a304f1ddcf

How do I feel now? Happier. Considerably so overall.

I'm happier because since I wrote that, he's been busily turning Boris Johnson into quivering, increasingly neurotic jelly at Prime Minister's Questions - which may as well be renamed LOTO's Questions and PM's evasions - every week.

I'm happier because his approval ratings have shot up: so much so that extraordinarily, they already match Blair's best-ever approval ratings as Leader of the Opposition.

I'm happier because more or less all those friends, family, acquaintances I have and have mentioned before - who did vote for Corbyn in 2017 but didn't in 2019 and didn't vote for Miliband in 2015 either - are impressed and delighted. They find him credible, serious and effective

I'm happier because overall, I remain convinced he drew the correct conclusions from the defeat and is putting many of them into practice.

I am, however, unhappy that no action has happened as of yet over the Labour Leaks - and await the investigation's outcome with interest.

What's happening, though - public impression of him improving quickly, while the same criticisms are aired (often furiously) - on here, is a reminder of two things:

1. This place is, when all's said and done, an echo chamber. All social media is.

2. The historic rift between socialists and liberals? It'll never be fully healed. The best that can be hoped for isn't so much peaceful coexistence as armed neutrality in the name of a bigger cause: Getting The Tories Out.

That rift goes way, way, way back.

It's been present ever since the Labour Party was formed: and reared its head most obviously in the 1930s, 1950s, 1980s and late 2010s. It's natural: liberals and socialists have profoundly different world views, and ideas on how to achieve what they want.

But when it comes to defeating the Tories, liberals cannot win by themselves and socialists cannot win by themselves. You have to take the best of both - which essentially is why, after the election, I highlighted the need for someone *in between* Blair and Corbyn.

Of course, plenty of people on here think Starmer is just another Blair. People I speak to away from here are baffled by the very idea. They don't think Starmer's a 'centrist'; they do take him seriously and think he can help make Britain a better place.

You'll note, though, that despite Starmer's soaring personal ratings, Labour remain behind in the polls: albeit much more narrowly than before. The reason for that is simple. Labour's brand was trashed - for years - so people still don't trust us.

I'm going to find it pretty hard to ever forgive those who took part in that trashing: both in the media and the PLP. They did the party lasting harm.

But it's harm that, nonetheless, can steadily be repaired. Which starts with Starmer's calm, sensible leadership.

Leadership which also involves him making calculations based not on how we wish things were - but how they actually ARE.

And how things actually *are* is: voters know the system is unfair, know the poor are suffering... but don't trust Labour to keep them safe.

Why did Starmer not actively support the forcible removal of statues? The answer's because so many of Labour's lost voters prioritise "law and order". Labour voters always have - because many are likely to live in places where there's more crime.

It's no good saying to them "so - you don't care about black lives then?" These people aren't racist! They're just fearful. They don't trust us because they think the left's on the side of revolutionaries. They think the left wants to tear everything they've ever known up.

Is the right wing media to blame for that perception? Considerably so, yes. But the right wing media still exists. Still prints papers which millions read. And in politics, perception is at least nine tenths of reality.

What do Labour's lost voters think about us and patriotism?

Answer: many of them think we hate Britain. They never thought that about any viable Labour leader. They probably started thinking it right at the fag end of Gordon Brown's premiership: Gillian Duffy and all that.

Since when, that perception has grown arms and legs.

So they blame us for mass immigration; they think we want to turn Britain into Venezuela; they recoiled from our failure to automatically support the Western alliance; and the more people on here bemoan imperialism, the more their perceptions are reinforced.

IMPORTANT NOTE: This does NOT mean that we have to somehow pretend that imperialism was 'good'. It does mean that a political party seeking to lead a country can't appear to be slagging off that country and its history at every turn.

Which brings me to... Churchill. A racist man with profoundly racist ideas who did huge harm to huge numbers of people... yet who's also a national hero. Rightly so, given his leadership helped save us from the Nazis.

The protests about him have been especially divisive because they involve shaking people's world views and ideas of our national story to their very core.

Look at how scared people are to change their views on here about anything - then multiply that by about a thousand.

Human beings are invariably scared to really look deep inside themselves and embrace huge change. That aspect of human nature isn't going to magically alter. The culture wars - social conservatives v social liberals, open v closed, old v young - are driven mostly by FEAR.

Well: you don't defeat that fear and get enough people to come over to your side by browbeating them again and again about racism, describing their national hero as 'evil' or anything like that. All you do is make things worse and double down on the divide.

Now - if Starmer didn't support Black Lives Matter, then I'd have a problem with him. A massive one. But he does.

If Starmer was in league with Trump in any way, then I'd have a problem with him. A massive one. But he's not.

If Starmer didn't want substantive economic and social change, then I'd have a big problem with him. A massive one. But he does. It's what drives him. It's why he wants to become Prime Minister: to HELP people.

After the election, I mentioned repeatedly how Corbyn just hadn't known how to "play the game". What you saw was what you got; which of course, explained a huge amount of his appeal with so many. But it also helped explain his ultimate electoral failure.

Plenty of things which Starmer says are designed to appeal to as broad an electoral coalition as possible. That's just good politics. People have to vote for us before we can do anything at all.

And if they do, and we win, no: that won't be the end of the left. Gimme a break.

Go back to that famous Gramsci quote.

"The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear".

We are in that interregnum NOW. That is what the 2020s will all be about. The old is dying - both in terms of people and a failed, bankrupt system - but the new still hasn't been born. We don't have a replacement system; there aren't enough young voters.

But as the decade wears on, and more and more crises emerge - economic, social, health, climate - not only will there inevitably be more and more awareness of how urgently change is needed; but today's young will be tomorrow's thirty and forty-somethings. Who can decide elections

I fully expect the kinds of leaders people look for at the end of the decade to be very different to those they still want (mostly because they're so fearful) now. Starmer's task is to bridge that transition, that gap, between the old and the new, between fear and hope.

By the end of the decade, I think Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will be President of the United States. By the end of the decade, I think Labour will probably have a highly electable, female, young left wing leader. But people need help NOW - and we can't run before we can walk.

So whenever I see people fulminating on here that Starmer's "not an ally" or "he's a neoliberal" or "let's start a new party" or whatever, I think of:

- The homeless
- The poor
- Those on universal credit
- The disabled
- Immigrants
- Asylum seekers
- Our public services

- The planet itself

I think, in short, of all those who want and need the Tories out desperately. Frantically. Most of whom couldn't give a flying fig about who the leader happens to be; they just want these bastards out. It's life or death for some of them.

We might not like the way "the game" is played - lord knows, I despise it much of the time. But Keir Starmer knows how to play it and is doing so very effectively. Thanks to that attribute, he's far more likely to help all those people than Corbyn, for all his qualities, ever was

The left will always push for more, as it damn well should. It's the left which supplies the energy, the vision, the ideas, the hope a huge amount of the time.

But Labour winning requires more than that. It needs an alliance of left and centre against the right.

It needs us all to remember who the political enemy actually are. The Tories. Whose execrable record is alienating more and more: who'll come over to us if only we're open to them.

That record's going to get even worse. On the horizon are economic calamity and No Deal Brexit.

The idea that the Tories will somehow get through both unscathed is for the birds. The public isn't going to swallow austerity a second time over; it's already turned against the government's shambolic handling of Coronavirus; the impact of No Deal Brexit will be massive.

Labour's reputation was so trashed for so long that the Tories were only surviving by default. Well: they've nowhere to turn now. More and more voters regard us as credible, professional and electable. We are right back in the contest - and our future looks very bright.

So please, don't despair. I do hear the criticisms. I do get where they come from in many ways. But there's a much bigger picture here - and what I like most about Keir Starmer is: he gets that. He knows what it'll take. And I'm right behind him in that.