The foremost question Labour party members should be asking themselves this morning, following yesterday’s predicted disastrous showing in the local, mayoral and devolved government elections, is this: do you care more about the short-term survival of your party or the long-term survival of your country? Because as it stands, and if the predicted coup against Keir Starmer is set in motion later today, that is the choice you will now have to make.

Starmer’s passive timidity in the face of this threat has made matters worse

Starmer’s passive timidity in the face of this threat has made matters worse

The reason why Starmer has been such a dithering and inept Prime Minister is that, wittingly or not, he has always placed party before country. Most of his bad decisions, and the failure to make good ones, have stemmed from his undue concern for the left-wing faction that constitute his backbenches, and from the threat posed to the party by leftwingers outside it.

The power of the left, as made evident in a likely good result for the Greens today, has been both his and the country’s undoing in less than two years of government. While his Chancellor Rachel Reeves has actively made matters worse, punishing the middle classes and crippling businesses with £75 billion worth of new taxes, leaving the country with a welfare budget which now exceeds the........

© The Spectator