Here's a statement of the bleedin' obvious. There's a quite massive difference in how Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn *do* politics. I think it's at the heart of most of the squabbles on here - but maybe not in the way you might imagine.

Corbyn, of course, inspired so many to join (in many cases, rejoin) the movement. A conviction politician whose views essentially never altered on anything significant. So to his supporters, he was seen as the epitome of principle and authenticity.

But too much of the broader electorate don't share those convictions: or at least, not all of them, and certainly not in a dogmatic way. So what he gained among the base, he lost among the wider public (with the media and saboteur MPs more than playing their part too).

At PMQs, Corbyn essentially did what he's spent a career doing. Talking and talking and talking about the same bread-and-butter issues... but showing no flexibility, no ability to think off the cuff, and plainly uncomfortable. Understandably so: it's a baying mob of hyenas.

Get him away from that - campaigning on a platform or soapbox - and the real Corbyn so often shone through. Though not, I might add, towards the end: when he'd plainly been worn down by it all.

I don't think there's ever been another politician in my lifetime who's divided opinion so incredibly much between his supporters - for whom he could never do anything wrong - and his critics, most of whom treated him like something approaching Lucifer. Bizarre.

And a lot of that is because of how he and his supporters *do* politics: always protesting, rarely compromising (albeit: he did so too much on Brexit), getting issues into the spotlight but in tangible terms, never actually achieving anything.

I don't mean that as a slight against him. He was on the right side of history on Iraq, austerity, Windrush.. but did he stop any of it? No. He had to win to make a real difference - and for different reasons and in different ways, he failed twice in that regard.

His supporters take pride in him never having given an inch.

His opponents ask what the point of it all was given he never won. It was magnificent, but (fittingly for him, really), it wasn't war.

Then, there's Starmer. "Mr Boring". "Mr Grey". "A knight of the realm is going to change nothing!" "We don't have an opposition!"

Except that yes: we very much do. It's just that Starmer does politics in a totally different, meticulous, highly methodical way.

Even when he really goes for the government - which he will as this crisis intensifies - he won't do it with cliches or soundbites. There'll be a calm purpose to everything he says. And Johnson, when he returns, won't be able to dodge his questions. He'll be skewered.

I even recall derision from some on here when Starmer launched his leadership campaign. Scorn at an extremely professional video which meant he hit the ground running, and built up a lead immediately. "Uh oh, it's pre-packaged career politician time again".

Except that no, he's not a career politician - and professional communication which seeks to reach as many people as possible across the political spectrum isn't bad. It's good. It's desperately needed too.

As, for that matter, is seriousness.

Probably over 40,000 Britons have died from this virus already. Tens of thousands, conceivably hundreds of thousands if this thing stays with us for years, will perish beyond that. The idea that being "a laugh" is what voters will look for at such a time is preposterous.

The first duty of any government anywhere is to keep its people safe. This government has already failed to do so to a quite grotesque extent - and there's nobody with the skills or ability to change that. Almost all ministers are out of their depth and unfit for purpose.

As, too, is a state ravaged by a decade of austerity, and a health service deliberately run down by a pack of vandals.

Will Starmer expose that? Of course! But he won't do so in a way that looks opportunistic or cheap or even party political. He'll do so in a statesmanlike way.

The way in which he asks questions will sound reasonable - and will also ensure that the public notice when ministers don't answer them. That whole style has been honed for many years. It is exactly the correct one for a time like this.

Ultimately, what he's about is OUTCOMES. He's desperate for outcomes right now to improve. He'll try and point this hopeless government towards improving them.

And he also knows there's no point in protesting about something - lack of UBI - without being able to change it.

There's that whole politics of protest thing again. Labour cannot achieve a single thing without winning an election first. There's no point in it calling for UBI when even the Resolution Foundation says it's impossible to implement right now. It's administrative reality.

Doesn't mean UBI won't be in the manifesto come the next election. I think it almost certainly will be. But Starmer does not do gestures. So he'll get slagged off on here by people who only look at headlines; by people who do politics very differently to him.

What he ultimately wants is to combine the vigour, energy and ideas of the left with the professional politics elsewhere in the party. That's the correct approach.

I'll never have any issue with the left calling for more from him. That's what it's there for: to keep pushing.

But there's a difference between pushing and pushing and trying to sabotage him. The latter approach is pathetic, Disgraceful. Every bit as much as when the right did it to Corbyn.

Another thing too. Yes, Starmer is managerial.

But good lord people: just because he's managerial doesn't mean the entire party will be! That's just his style. He's good at managing things. The best prime ministers are excellent at managing things. Attlee, most of all.

Corbyn? Um... not so much. Because he was about ideas.

He was the Bevan to Starmer's Attlee in that sense. Politics has always had plenty of room for both types, and many others besides.

But when the public looked at Corbyn, did it see a good manager? No. And that's important.

Yes, I know: heaven only knows how it saw it in Boris Johnson. Except that getting the British public to vote Labour is almost always a shedload harder than getting it to vote Tory. That's life under capitalism, and with a very ageing population.

For Labour's ideas to win out, and be voted for in enough numbers, the public has to trust the party's competence first. It's when Labour head past the Tories on economic competence - on which it's trailed ever since 2008 - that we'll truly be in business.

The most bizarre thing for me, though, is observing how so many people on here believe that someone stylistically different is therefore about to ditch all those policies and ideas!

No, he's not. Not a bit of it. He's just politically savvier in how he'll go about winning first

Corbyn never wanted to be leader. The whole thing happened by accident. Yes, it did change British politics, just as it changed the Labour Party: massively for the better overall.

But that he didn't want to be leader matters. He'd never even been on the frontbench.

So he didn't have any experience in combating baying Tory toffs and assorted tools. He didn't have any experience in expanding on his brief in a media-friendly way. Even in length, he was to asking questions what I am to writing Twitter threads.

Again: his supporters saw all this as a strength. A sign of his substance.

The broader electorate never perceived this. And in the 2017 election, faced a choice it didn't want, between two individuals it felt were unfit for the task.

Had that campaign lasted one more week, Labour would have formed a government. Who knows where we'd be now if it had? For myself, I consider John Smith the best PM we never had; but Corbyn might well have grown into the role. We'll never know now.

But for me, the measure of the man is: he'd be horrified at anyone leaving the party because it's now under very different leadership. He'd want everyone to stay, fight and get the Tories out. And I'm quite sure he wishes Keir Starmer the very best.

Strange how, just like Bernie Sanders - and just like Tony Benn too - such a mild, kind, decent man attracts such angry fervour amongst his devotees.

But people, please: turn that fervour and that anger where it belongs. The government. The Tories. It's what opposition means.

And just as Starmer says, rightly, that neither the last 5 years nor the last Labour government should be trashed, that's my view too.

I continue to view the scorn which anyone who says anything good about that government receives on here with wry amusement.

It did a lot of bad, It did an awful lot of good. And it helped many, many, many people. Which is what politics is ultimately supposed to be about.