Echo Comment on Keir Starmer surviving the day as Prime Minister

Bollards are always there, unmoving, unflinching, and even when struck, they bounce back up.

Mr Starmer, at the time of writing at least, is still in No 10. He’s taken a hell of a battering but he has bounced back into position at the head of the Cabinet table.

More than 100 Labour backbenchers have signed a letter giving him their support, and their arguments are sound. The British people punished the Tories for chopping and changing leaders and they questioned Rishi Sunak’s legitimacy when he popped up as leader at a distance from the General Election mandate. If Labour swops out Mr Starmer, it will be accused of doing the same as the Tories.

Yet all the stuff that has been said about Mr Starmer in the days since the local election humiliation cannot be unsaid. All the stuff about a lack of vision and direction, a lack of urgency and charisma, a lack of political nous, a lack of connection with his own MPs letalone with the great British public, a large chunk of which it is now openly said actually loathes – a very strong word – the Prime Minister. All of that still derogatory stuff stands, and it came from 80-plus Labour MPs and even six Cabinet members.

So the great bollard of Downing Street is still there, stubbornly refusing to be moved, but he has been so badly damaged and undermined – even by his own side – it is hard to see that the questions and the plotting will ever go away. How can he regain the political strength to deliver the change the country needs and that Labour promised?

He remains, for the time being at least, a very diminished Prime Minister. Let’s hope the bollard does not block Britain from moving forward.