I’ll freely admit:

I have been surprised at how bold & imaginative Joe Biden has been since coming to power as leader of the free world.

and...

I have been surprised at how timid & unimaginative Keir Starmer has been since coming to power as leader of the Labour Party.

Incidentally, I agonised over that tweet.

This time last year I was tweeting “ #BeerForKeir”. As the months went on, I thought he was doing a great job.

By autumn 2020 I was getting very concerned that LOTO was insular - and they clearly had no policy engines running.

There was no gear-shift from the initial rebrand - where Keir alone was lifting the polling of the party - to one where you were on the front foot...

...with a boss front bench and bold new policies/ suggestions gazumping what the Tories were coming out with.

There was clearly no engine of ideas, whether internally or with the myriad progressive campaigns which naturally sit within Labour’s broader territory.

LOTO was insular - even to excellent front-benchers, which alarmed me.

This is why Labour started losing steam.

You can’t fall into the Ed Miliband trap of oh we’ll just wait our time - and we’re the default option when Tories burn out —hey Red Wall, we’ve focus grouped you and we like what you like!

That’s fake soulless & people know it to be so.

And I know Labour SpAds were like that.

Politics is high-energy and tough. And the Tories have think-tanks and bullshit and balls and money churning out ideas all over the place. If it’s ridiculous and doesn’t fly - they shrug & move on.

But they are constantly flexing and testing. While Labour bides time, atrophying.

So Labour needs a jump-start. It needs to see the political picture from across all parties and all campaigns and all society bodies and think about how it can harness all over that- not from a “support us” perspective, but from a genuine healthy, collaborative perspective.

That would be the step-change, the paradigm shift that Labour, and this country, needs.

Ah - someone unrolled the thread for me. Nice: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1380955942846611460.html