Britain is facing its Joe Biden moment |
In 2024 the Democrats in the US delayed too long replacing an incapable and unpopular president Joe Biden as their presidential candidate, until the disastrous TV debate with Donald Trump when Biden lapsed into incoherence.
They replaced him with the not notably capable or popular vice president Kamala Harris, who was too closely associated with the Biden administration’s mistakes to distance herself from them. Trump was the beneficiary of these avoidable errors, with calamitous results for America and the world.
The Labour Party has pursued a similarly self-destructive course in seeking to remove Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister long after his chronic failings as a politician and party leader were visible to all. Labour’s disastrous defeat in the 7 May local elections ought to be the equivalent of Biden’s TV debacle two years earlier. Yet, as in the case of the former American president – but without the excuse of deteriorated mental health – Starmer was at the time of writing still stubbornly in denial about the necessity for his departure.
A Labour Party with greater skills in defenestrating failed leaders would have got rid of Starmer last year. Bizarrely, it was telegraphed ahead for months that the rival panjandrums of the party would wait until horrendous defeat in the local elections before seeking to evict Starmer, which is like an army command saying that it will wait to remove a general of proven incapacity until he had lost one........