Keir Starmer: he may have engineered widespread support for himself by purging the Labour Party of dissenters, but he is heading for a disaster of epic proportions in the local elections.

A few obvious answers are available to the question in the headline but we’ll get to them soon enough. First, the evidence:

The Labour Party’s prospects in next months local elections are plummeting to new lows every time there is a poll, it seems.

YouGov’s last three show a distinct downward trajectory, from this on April 8…

… to this, eight days later:

https://twitter.com/EnglishElects/status/1383032112748634118

So according to this pollster, Labour is now trailing the Conservatives by 14 points, at a time when the Tories can’t do anything right and should be fearing the public’s backlash over Brexit, Covid-19, corruption and the possible end of the United Kingdom.

And, of course, Starmer’s supporters should be reminded that they said anybody but Jeremy Corbyn would give Labour a 20-point lead, automatically.

Meanwhile, though, another YouGov survey has claimed that Labour Party members are satisfied with Starmer’s performance and think he’s doing a great job.

How can this be?

Two answers present themselves:

Firstly, that the purge that Starmer launched after he became party leader last year has been successful and members who belonged to the left wing of the party – socialists who conform to the ideals that led to its original formation – have largely been removed, leaving a right-wing rump that agrees with Starmer’s wishy-washy, Tory-supporting, any-way-the-wind-blows populism.

Or alternatively that – as a result of the purge – anybody left within Labour is living in fear of being purged if they are found to have said anything even remotely critical of the party leadership.

There’s a word for an organisation that instils that kind of fear in the people. I’m sure you know the one I mean. It would explain why Starmer has been so supportive of Boris Johnson’s thugs.

Of course, there are still nearly three weeks until the elections – and a week in politics is still a long time.

There’s plenty of time for Labour to fare much worse than even the current polls are suggesting.

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