In the summer of 1992 John Major was riding high. Selling himself as the everyman leader voters could relate to, Margaret Thatcher’s successor as prime minister had just won an election against the odds and had a few months when all seemed well. Then Black Wednesday happened, the 1992 sterling crisis, and after George Soros and his fellow speculators ousted Britain from the European exchange rate mechanism it was never the same again. Major became the man with the reverse Midas touch. He could do nothing right. He became a figure of fun. The press was merciless. Keir Starmer is the new John Major. True, there has been nothing as totemic as Black Wednesday in the past 18 months, merely a drip feed of bad news. Voters who expected Starmer to be a fresh start after 14 years of Conservative incompetence and sleaze have suffered from a bad dose of buyer’s remorse, with the Green party and Reform UK the beneficiaries of rapid public disillusionment. Once a prime minister has a reputation for being hapless, the impression is hard to shift. Major lost the 1997 election by a landslide even though the economy had performed strongly in the five years after Black Wednesday. Starmer doesn’t even have that going for him. Growth is weak and this week there was news that unemployment has risen to its highest in almost five years. The........

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