I didn’t say this yesterday, because fulminating on Twitter is exactly the opposite of cathartic, but since it rankles: late last week we saw news that two police officers had been arrested for taking and sharing selfies next to the bodies of two murdered black women, sisters.

Yesterday, Keir Starmer went on TV & bounced back a question about defunding police by stressing his record as a prosecutor, ‘bringing thousands to court’, & his closeness to police. There wasn’t any indication there might be *anything* wrong with the police or CJS, as he saw it.

(An aside, I doubt KS actually thinks that: his most prominent cases as a young barrister, the police history of the Stephen Lawrence case with which he'd have been familiar given the prosecution during his tenure as DPP, his human rights role with PSNI - all suggest otherwise.)

It's not an accident. It’s obvious Team Starmer’s reading of the failures of the Corbyn period is that perceived laxness on crime, discipline and discomfort with patriotism spelled electoral disaster. They’re happy to risk ‘overcorrecting’ – ‘where else do they have to go?’ &c.

I don’t expect the Labour leader to embrace defunding the police. Corbyn never did – in fact one of Corbynism’s major incoherences was around what policing was for, whether a social democratic vision of policing was even possible. (I wrote on that here: https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2019/august/red-meat-for-the-faragists )

An easy but insufficient defence of the leadership is that the LOTO shouldn't be expected to embrace whatever left-wing Twitter (tiny, unrepresentative, loud, vain) thinks is good. So, sure, it’s unreasonable to expect the former DPP to tattoo ‘ACAB’ on his forehead or whatever.

But it’s entirely reasonable to think that a political leader of the left ought to be able to answer a question like that while also insisting on bringing black experiences of racism - police & otherwise - in the UK *into* the conversation rather than airbrushing them out.

(If anything, you could say his Starmer's record as DPP gives him exactly the kind of credibility to ignite that conversation in the UK in a way that Corbyn - with his history as an inveterate leftist backbencher - would never have been able to.)

Does it make me angry? Sure, but there’s enough of that online. I also think it rather sad & a bit tawdry. Left-wing twitter sometimes interprets Starmer with wild bad faith, or elevates mild flubs into world historical catastrophes. But this I thought was actually shameful.

Last thought: Starmer’s reaction to protest has been consistently dismissive. Perhaps another overcorrection; perhaps a difficult one for Labour leaders anyway, wanting to balance receptiveness to movements, wide appeal, ‘normalcy’ etc – especially now, post-Corbyn.

But an explanation of the political difficulties isn't actually a defence (although it sometimes masquerades as one in centre-left journalism.) Finding how to balance all those competing problems is *the* political question. And it is hard.

Does it matter? Well, you could put it this way: with an enormous recession underway, huge economic turbulence, an erratic right-wing government & more profound destabilisation coming in the next decade from climate change - do you think there will be less civil unrest, or more?