Starmer’s caution infuriates some in Labour. But there’s method in his mildness | Martin Kettle

With pivotal byelections being fought, and boundary changes in the offing, the Labour leader is wise to resist making promises voters know he can’t keep

Muhammad Ali called it his “rope-a-dope” strategy: don’t attack until you are ready to do so and your opponent has exhausted themselves. The Roman general Quintus Fabius Maximus followed a similar approach against Hannibal’s Carthaginians, preferring to tie the enemy down in a long war of attrition rather than confronting them in a pitched battle. At the time, many impatient contemporaries thought both Ali and Fabius had taken leave of their senses. Many were proved wrong.

Keir Starmer has neither Ali’s charisma nor Fabius’s military prowess. But it is not entirely an exaggeration to suggest he has a rope-a-dope strategy and an attritional mentality all of his own that carry at least some echoes of these two legends. Nor that this is all straining some impatient supporters to the limit, just as it did at ringside in Kinshasa and doubtless did in the taverns of Ancient Rome.

Martin Kettle is a Guardian associate editor and columnist

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