Call me a Blairite, Tory, Establishment stooge, careerist, sellout, whatever makes you feel better. The situation is extremely grave and unless satis… - Owen Jones

It remains the case that the most interesting ideas are bubbling away on the left: banishing them from Labour's future is an act of self-harm. If a meek Starmer administration disappoints, a now cowed left may find an audience willing to listen. Starmer's team is buoyant now, and understandably so: but history tell us where hubris leads.

His great departure from Thatcherism was a desperately needed boost to spending on public services. Nothing remains of this as a principle in British politics. It is left to arch-critics of [Tony] Blair like myself to defend a big chunk of his government's economic record from his own supporters.

A few months ago, the BBC asked me to debate with Labour's Simon Danczuk, who supported George Osborne's proposal to make people thrown out of work wait an extra week for benefits. I say "debate", because Mr Danczuk turned up with a few prepared personal attacks, finding me guilty of having lived in "the posh part of Stockport". If it really matters, I grew up in the town's second-most deprived ward: a more accurate ad hominem attack would have been that I grew up in a middle-class family, because my dad was a white-collar local authority worker and my mother was an IT lecturer at Salford University.