As Andrew Rawnsley says, Keir Starmer will indeed "find there is a price to pay for being the front-runner" in the Labour leadership race (Keir Starmer has the ability and the character, but what does he stand for? 12.01.20). Not only will he "get exposed to searching questions" about who he is, and what he stands for, he will also have to expect regular criticism from the chief political columnist in the main left-leaning Sunday newspaper in the UK.
Although apparently not quite finished with his hatchet-job on Corbyn, Rawnsley cannot resist starting ones on Long-Bailey and Starmer. The former clearly can`t win, criticised for being "unsure" about becoming "the torchbearer for Corbynism", when being "sure" would have led to her vilification. Uncertain about the latter`s political beliefs, Rawnsley resorts both to describing his "diagnosis" of Labour`s defeat as "vague", when anything else at this time would almost certainly mean political suicide, and including someone else`s opinion that he can be uninspiring and "boring". In attempting to unite the so-called "soft-left" of the party with pragmatic Corbynites, Starmer has to be reminded of the "inherent contradictions in such a broad coalition" which will have to be faced, yet when Corbyn rejected the idea of a "broad church", he was accused of "ideological zealotry and toxic factionalism".
Presumably, Rawnsley will not be satisfied until the Labour party has a leader who totally rejects left-wing policies to transform society and reduce inequality, who supports Trump`s actions in the Middle East, and who thinks the use of contextual data in universities` admissions procedures is unnecessary, but that ten years of austerity was!
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