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The façade of Tory invincibility has cracked. In constituencies and on the backbenches Tory morale has plummeted. Boris Johnson’s ratings have taken a nosedive. Partygate is bad but it’s

only the latest of a string of mishaps, false starts and U-turns. The thumping backbench revolt over Covid restrictions has opened up an ideological chasm in the Tory party. Johnson united

his MPs over Europe. He now finds himself at war with the far right of his party, which is beginning to doubt just how _laissez-faire_ the man is. Labour is now between four and six points

ahead in the polls, the party’s biggest lead during Johnson’s leadership. This is barely one swallow, let alone a summer. The polls suggest that if a general election were held tomorrow the

most likely outcome would be a hung parliament. The by-election loss of rural, pro-Brexit North Shropshire to the Liberal Democrats is a clap of thunder. But it is not a Labour gain. The

Tories are stumbling but Labour is not yet winning. Sir Keir Starmer, clever, steady, thoughtful but also ruthless when he needs to be, is still a bit ho-hum in the eyes of the electorate.

And of course, he bears the mark of Corbyn. Still, as the pollster Peter Kellner has pointed out in The New European, Starmer’s revamped shadow cabinet, his hard-line approach to

anti-Semitism and his resolute pivot back to the centre-left, offers a glimpse of resurrection for Labour. The question now is whether Starmer can build on this and reverse Labour’s losing

streak? Or is Labour, as the _New Yorker_ suggested in the autumn, Britain’s vanishing opposition, yesterday’s lost tribe left behind by history? In his book _Must Labour Always Lose?_ the

former Labour minister Denis MacShane offers the party some useful insights into why it keeps losing. He also asks why the party isn’t always comfortable winning and what it should do now.

The stagy title is, I suspect, deliberately provocative, a cry of frustration aimed at a party that has lost, not necessarily the ability but the desire to win. Fractious in power, unruly

out of power. Labour hasn’t done that badly over the past century. Since the arrival of the universal franchise in 1918 (though not for women under 30) there have been 28 general elections

in the UK: the Tories won most seats in 18, Labour in 10. This includes two Labour landslides: Clem Attlee in 1945 and Blair in 1997 not forgetting Harold Wilson’s record-breaking four

election wins. In the first, the country was exhausted after five years of war. In the second the Tories under Thatcher/Major were exhausted after 18 roller-coaster years in power. Labour

tends to be balm after the storm. Nevertheless, the cataclysmic result of the 2019 election, when Labour’s share of the popular vote was the worst in 30 years, capped a near 20-year decline.

Labour may not be in terminal decline, but it has a mountain to climb. A single statistic illustrates this brutal fall from grace: in 1997, after the Blair landslide, Labour had 421 seats.

Today it has 199. The Labour party has now been out of power for 11 years. Its slow enfeeblement is not unique. It mirrors the collapse of support for left and centre-left elsewhere in

Europe. But it has suffered — and to some extent still does — from weaknesses which are largely self-inflicted. * The party remains fractious and tribal. With Labour it’s in the DNA. * The

decision to invade Iraq in 2003 on what turned out to be a false prospectus was fatal. There were no WMD. This was hubris pure and simple, alienating the progressive left. * The failure to

defend its economic record after the 2008 financial crash which Gordon Brown, for all his faults, played a pivotal role in blunting. * Blair’s fateful decision in 2004 not to impose

transitional arrangements on immigration when ten eastern European countries joined the EU. Immigration from the EU, as the aftermath of Brexit and the effects of the pandemic have shown

(the City, the NHS, road haulage, butchers, fruit-pickers) is a good thing — provided it is managed fairly. But other forces were stirring. Migrants were used to galvanise a wider range of

grievances. Nigel Farage’s infamous “Breaking Point” poster became the standard that changed our island story. And then there’s Jeremy Corbyn. He was elected leader but was unelectable in

the country at large. Labour MPs, grasping at straws after the trauma of yet another defeat in 2015, this time under the feeble Ed Miliband, were dozing. MacShane describes Corbyn as “a

moralist not a Marxist., a preacher more than a political leader, a one-man home to lost or unpopular causes,” such as Sinn Fein and the Palestinians. There is some truth to this. Corbyn was

a dreamer, flattered and manipulated by ideologues. But it is not the whole truth. Corbyn appealed mainly to urban, progressive intellectuals and what you might call the Glastonbury

generation. He and his supporters were blindsided by the adulation he generated in the 2017 election. “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” was a siren song. His shilly-shallying on Brexit was damaging but not

decisive. In the long arc of Labour’s history, the Corbyn moment will prove a distraction. The plain truth is that personalities and tactical mistakes aside, Labour has been losing because

it hasn’t been paying attention. Comfortable in its home-spun narrative as the party of the working class it has, for two decades, been taking its heartlands for granted. True, the

composition of that base has changed. You can follow your forefathers as a Liverpool fan — but not necessarily your party — if your dad was, say, a miner and you are a doctor or an

entrepreneur. Disregarded by the party these 3rd  or 4th generation voters deep in Labour territory switched sides. Starmer has done a good job in picking up the pieces, but Labour remains a

party profoundly at odds with itself and, as yet, not knowing which way to turn in the post-Brexit world. We have yet to see a Starmer roadmap. Starmer’s task is made much harder than

Blair’s. One big reason is the rise of Scottish nationalism. Labour once dominated north of the border. It has since been all but wiped out. That disintegration too, which could become a

wipe-out at the next election, was caused by inattention. There are those, like William Hague, who argue that devolution was responsible. I disagree. A robust Union only makes sense as a

partnership of equals. A conversation with the SNP would be a start. In _Must Labour Always Lose_ MacShane comes up with some sound ideas to help Labour’s fight back. One of them is that

Starmer must create a “narrative” that voters can believe in. The challenge I suggest is bigger than that. Like many of its socialist partners in Europe, the British Labour party, buffeted

by nationalism and global dislocation, has failed to respond. Starmer talks about being “voter-facing”. Yes, but what does that mean? The country is more divided than ever. Inequality of

opportunity is rife. We are not yet a meritocracy. Far from it. Covid has laid that bare. The things that were meant to unite us — globalisation, technology and capitalism — have done the

opposite. Children go hungry. Care workers who put themselves in harm’s way earn less than £100 a week. The Chancellor generous furlough scheme has saved thousands of businesses. Yet the

poor and the disabled are driven deeper into penury by having their Universal Credit payments slashed by £1,000-a-year. If Labour wants to survive as a major political force it needs a fresh

programme for government that addresses the so far unanswered question: how do you find the right balance between entrenched poverty, aspiration and wealth — between, as it were, the

merchant bank and the food bank. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed

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