The establishment wings of center-left parties know how to fight when confronting left-wing challenges from within their own ranks. But they rarely show the same capacity or willpower when turning to face their conservative opponents.

Hillary Clinton pulled out all the stops to beat Bernie Sanders in 2016, only to be bested by a candidate who proved the most unpopular president since the advent of modern polling. Four years later, Joe Biden rallied the Democratic establishment against Sanders once again, but his narrow victory over Donald Trump probably would not have happened without a disastrous pandemic that should have buried Trump altogether.

In Britain, Keir Starmer has concentrated on waging a factional war against the Labour Party’s left wing, including his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn. Meanwhile, Starmer still lags behind Boris Johnson and the Conservatives in most opinion polls, even after their incompetent handling of the pandemic has led to one hundred thousand deaths and counting.