Chris

I think you misunderstood the rhetorical nature of Pierre’s point. However, if you want to chart the extent to which Starmer does or doesn’t understand the difference between his support in Parliament and his support in the country, it’ll come within his first term when he tries to enact something unpopular. Tony Blair found out when Gordon Brown tried to ‘escalate’ fuel duty and eventually had to back down when tanker drivers started picketing fuel depots. And they had somewhat greater popular support than Labour does today.

Labour with a large majority is going to be tempted to embark on a so-called progressive agenda that would be wildly popular on its own back benches but expose the fragile extent of its support in the country. Take, for example, the way gender ideology became a campaign issue in the final fortnight and the number of even quite senior Labour figures who seem unable to define ‘woman’ - Angela Rayner was reduced to complaining on LBC that the issue had become a ‘political football’, seemingly failing to grasp that voters repeatedly raising the question on TV debates and radio phone ins during an election campaign is not the same thing as MPs posturing and yelling at each other in the Commons.

It could be gender ideology, it could be immigration, it could be something else entirely, but if Starmer is tempted to think that his power base is in his Commons majority and not in the goodwill of the two-thirds of people who didn’t vote for him, he will come unstuck very quickly. And we have just seen exactly how volatile the electorate is right now, and how quickly a large majority can disappear.

Time will tell.