Perhaps the most dangerous claim Keir Starmer ever made will turn out to be his General Election slogan, arguing that changing the Labour Party made him well qualified for changing the country. This lies behind the paradox of gaining a huge majority and rapidly losing popularity. And behind that lies our clapped out voting system for Westminster elections.

People are in favour of changing the country but the change they want varies hugely. As for changing the Labour Party – is that crucial to how they vote? Do they see it as any of their business? What do they see if they are encouraged to look at Labour internal matters for five minutes? How strong a card was not being Jeremy Corbyn? It was clearly nothing like as strong as not being any of the last four Conservative Prime Ministers.

Liberal Democrats are only too familiar with the failure of First Past the Post to reflect who and what people want to support. Most General Elections are about who people don’t want in government. The subtleties of distinguishing different factions within parties gets the activists excited. It is something I have occasionally come across in a micropub – but not very often! Many Labour members recognise that proportional representation for Westminster would leave space for more open discussion within the party (and more meaningful votes at the Party Conference). So long as the system demands that an artificially wide coalition of political opinions is a prerequisite of gaining power, the danger (and distraction) of pouring too much energy into infighting will always be there. The country deserves better.

As Mark Pack reminded us in 2017, it is now recognised that Harold Macmillan never really said “Events, dear boy, events” when asked what was most likely to knock governments off course. However it has been a useful fiction for journalists ever since the 1960s. Members of Keir Starmer’s cabinet must wake up each morning very conscious of the famous non-quote.

This week people inside and outside the Labour Party will be scratching their heads as to implications of the Burnham fiasco. Andy Burnham would in normal times no doubt be very grateful for the party (more or less) united in telling him what a great job he is doing as Mayor of Greater Manchester. Some of us cannot avoid remembering him telling us that the Conservative/Labour version of devolution was the future. Whatever he said in tortuous statements explaining why he wanted to stand in a Westminster by-election, that future is still his. Meanwhile if Labour fails to win the Gorton and Denton by-election they have the consolation of knowing that technically it will be somebody’s gain from an Independent!

* Geoff Reid is a Methodist minister who spent the first twelve years of retirement from the day job as a Bradford City Councillor but has lived in Barnsley since 2024.