Hate to say it guys, but I really don't think that Starmer will go and there won't be a General Election either as Labour will still serve the term they were elected for regardless of how poor they have been.

Those members of the Labour Party that are currently being very vocal in their criticisms of Starmer have been long time critics and I believe that most in the party will want to soldier on with him simply because there is no obvious other centrist leader and they won't want to risk further splitting the party by moving too far to the left.

Don't get me wrong, I dislike Starmer too, particularly as a leader. Too often he falls foul of (quite avoidable) problems of his own making simply because he consistently fails to "read the room" or properly think through the next steps of policies. The resultant U-turns make him look weak and inept. I forget which Labour MP criticised his government for not getting things right first time, but he wasn't wrong!

Even if there were to be a GE, I personally would have no faith in any of the other parties that they could turn this country around-especially Reform. It genuinely worries me that, if there was an election, many would vote Farage & Co. into power. Not only do I dislike so much of what Reform stands for, but I also believe they haven't got much of a clue beyond all the rhetoric and deflection surrounding immigration. Lets face it, Trump's only genuine election promise achievement has been his successful curbing of illegal immigration but has this benefited the majority of Americans as he claimed it would? Are inflation or unemployment figures down? Is access to housing, education or healthcare improved? Is serious crime down? The answer is no. I'm not saying that illegal immigration is not a problem in this country because it clearly is, but solving it will certainly not be a cure all for the myriad of problems this country faces.

It is always much easier to be in opposition than in power for any party because they are mostly able to just find fault and criticise, rather than have to find solutions to mostly complex problems. It is a lot harder to have to actually govern, something that Nige himself seemed to have acknowledged in his recent interview with Laura Kuenssberg. One of the issues, or course, is lack of experience and many Reform led councils have found that the promises they made in their elections around saving money while improving services have been very hard to make good on. The reality is that there are no easy answers to the complex situations local councils face and, in some cases, Reform councils have had to increase council tax to fund the improvements they promised whilst some others have seen rather ugly and public fall outs. The latter is something Nige noted. He was quite prepared to stand up and justify his own decisions or behaviour, but having to also shoulder the blame for mistakes made by other party members-particularly MPs or councillors-was more difficult- though he readily acknowledged that this was all part of the job of being party leader. Even if leaders take action against bad behaviour or decisions from their party members, these still leave their mark and tarnish reputations.

The above is certainly not to excuse Starmer. As with the Abd El-Fattah case, he was clearly ill advised but whatever he may claim about other people failing to do due diligence, he himself was-yet again-guilty of an alarming level of mis-judgement. (And who, in all seriousness, would believe Mandelson?)

Despite all his failings, I think you are all going to be disappointed and Starmer will survive yet another cluster f uck. The truly sad thing for me, is that I can see no genuine viable alternative to either him as leader (though I quite like Burnham) or to Labour 😞