Kelly’s Eye

THE last rites have been read over Labour so many times since last week’s Hartlepool debacle and local election results that there’s little point in adding to them.

It’s suffice to recall what I wrote here on January 1, 2020, as the party entered its most recent leadership contest: “To even entertain the notion that electing Keir Starmer or Emily Thornberry as the next leader will reconnect Labour with voters who deserted the party at last month’s general election is to demonstrate how wide that chasm has become.”

So, for the sake of devilment, and just when things have never looked better for him, let me offer this counter-intuitive observation: Boris Johnson has few friends in the Conservative party.

By that I don’t mean its rankand-file. Like the wider electorate, they harbour an affection for him that is rarely extended to politicians. I mean the Tory hierarchy, which is as uncomfortable with Johnson as it was with similar mavericks Churchill and Thatcher.

Their relationship with him is what was accurately described recently as a “transactional” one. They tolerate Johnson because he’s a winner.The moment it looks like he’s stopped being one, they will drop him quicker than Bafta did Noel Clarke.

Equally predictable is that the Tories will replace Johnson with a much more conventional duffer whose superficial early appeal swiftly evaporates.

That should be their opponents’ opportunity. But it will never be seized as long as Labour’s leaders and members alike comprise a monoculture of middle-class graduate opinion that finds it impossible to conceal its distaste – and often outright contempt – for the provincial majority.