Labour should be winning – but this Tory leadership circus is drowning Starmer out | Andy Beckett

Compared with the novelty of a new Conservative premier, the no-frills Labour leader is failing to show he is a fresher option

These ought to be great times for Labour. The worst Tory government in decades has just imploded. A discredited Boris Johnson lingers sulkily in Downing Street. The competition to succeed him is like a bad gameshow. Michael Gove, a key minister until two weeks ago, admits that some of the state “is simply … not functioning”. Most voters are rapidly getting poorer. Brexit is steadily unravelling. After 12 years under the Conservatives, much of Britain feels underfunded, worn out, even close to collapse.

Just as governments-in-waiting are supposed to, Labour recently won a byelection seat from the incumbents, and leads most polls by double digits. Well-targeted attacks on the government are emailed to journalists by Labour many times a day. In the Commons, increasingly confident shadow ministers such as Yvette Cooper and Angela Rayner treat their Tory counterparts with contempt. With New Labour veterans among Keir Starmer’s allies and advisers, and the Conservatives associated with sleaze and shambles, British politics occasionally feels like a rerun of the mid-1990s, when Tony Blair was about to take power.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist

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