As Keir Starmer approached the end of his first year as Labour leader, there was a sullen mood in the camp. An editorial in the New Statesman, would-be house journal of Starmerism, complained that his leadership was devoid of vision: “The Labour Party seems to have lost confidence in what it is, what it wants and for whom it speaks.”

Tom Kibasi, an enthusiastic supporter of Starmer’s leadership campaign in 2020, delivered a scathing verdict on his record to date in February of the following year. According to Kibasi, Starmer had “provoked a completely unnecessary war with the party’s left” and launched a “full-frontal assault” on the Labour membership that was equally avoidable.

As Kibasi observed, Starmer’s belligerence toward the Labour left contrasted sharply with his willingness to “go easy on the government, rather than developing a clear message of his own.” In thrall to focus groups and short-term media hype, Starmer’s leadership was already in sore need of a reboot before it had celebrated its first birthday: “If Starmer were to depart as leader tomorrow, he would not leave a trace of a meaningful political project in his wake.”