5 July 2024, 06:12

By Andrew Marr

The British public hates to be taken for granted. And in politics, just sometimes, a single comment is so devastatingly self revealing it’s never forgotten. In April 1946 the labour minister Sir Hartley Shawcross, who had been a prosecutor of the Nazis at Nuremberg, replied to Tory critics of his trade union bill, "We are the masters at the moment, and not only at the moment but for a very long time to come."

Shortened by the press into “we are the masters now” it became a symbol of Labour arrogance after Clement Attlee had won his great victory over Winston Churchill. It feels freshly relevant today.

Keir Starmer has won a huge and astonishing electoral victory over the Conservatives. Following the labour defeat of 2019 he was told he had to be, in effect, Neil Kinnock, John Smith and Tony Blair, covering their stretches of reform and rebuilding inside the party but in only two........

© LBC