Dominic Cummings has laid out a roadmap for how Labour can avoid another Conservative landslide in 2024. According to the former chief advisor to Boris Johnson, Labour is overlooking — wilfully or otherwise — basic fundamentals that will make it a winning political party. These are simple enough: a leader that the public thinks is a ‘plausible alternative’ to the current leader and a small core team who understand the priorities of the general population. Labour currently has neither, he argues. First, because Starmer lacks the relative virtues of both charismatic Corbyn or milquetoast Miliband. Second, because Labour isn’t tough on crime or tough on Johnson’s blunders, which polling suggests would do well with swing voters.

First step, Cummings insists, is to accept Starmer as a dud or ‘dead-player’ :

He suggests that he should be replaced by a ‘Midlands woman’, namely Lisa Nandy. With Starmer’s stuttering on cervixes at this year’s conference, this move might repair Labour’s reputation on women’s rights, especially as Boris ‘cannot take women seriously’.

But just as importantly, the party needs to distance itself from the SW1 elitism:

Cummings diagnoses Starmer as too obsessed with the culture wars and not skilful enough to take political advantage of Johnson’s broken tax promises, Covid misfires and so on. Normal people have to ‘filter their priorities’, but Cummings thinks that ‘MPs, hacks and academics’ find this borderline impossible. 

A healthy opposition ought to be buzzing given Johnson’s recent blunders. The former No10 advisor details the mischief and mayhem of what a winning campaign should look like:

If the Tories are betting on Starmer staying in, Labour could play a wildcard by electing a new leader and listening to unsatisfied Tory voters. Could Cummings be the man to force their hand?