Here should endeth the lessons. Certainty and inevitability are the refuge of potentially false prophets

‘Listening’ and ‘learning lessons’.

In over a quarter of a century of reporting on, or being part of, UK politics, this response-to-bad-results #101 is rather unimaginative if safe. It’s staled by whether they mean it. They often don’t but that’s part of the dance.

Odd then that Keir Starmer in a tweet where he said, “I get it” and then demonstrated how much he really didn’t ‘get it’ thinks the lesson is ‘further and faster’.

Kemi Badenoch, having to take a hit for continued voter antipathy towards the Tories, says ‘slow and steady’ is still the course.

Reform UK might ask is that ‘Slow, slow, quick, quick, dead’ for both?

There are any number of columns that have been written, about how one or both is wrong, deluded or doomed. However in that twenty-five years I’ve noted a rule of political punditry: however certain the commentators of the ‘real lessons to learn now’ they’ll never mention, later, if they were in fact completely wrong.

I watched Conclave this weekend. It’s the film of Robert Harris’ engaging but slightly far-fetched thriller about the election of a Pope. Leaving the cardinals to themselves for now, I’d point to the moral compass of Dean Lawrence (played by Ralph Fiennes) when he says:

“Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance. Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand in hand with doubt.”

In politics, whilst unity and tolerance are certainly buzz words, I’m going to concentrate on the certainty and doubt bit.

There have been many ‘lessons’ we are told all the parties should learn, delivered with the absolute assurance that this is the way, and the light, and furthermore – not heeding this lesson is to walk blindly down the path to electoral damnation. The problem with that is the concept of inevitability removes the agency of those who want to prove it wrong.

I’m certain they can’t all be right, I doubt some of them are.

I’ll come to Reform’s lessons in a moment but for the once ‘two main parties’ much attention has focused on the existence and efficacy of ‘a plan’. Sunak said Starmer didn’t have one. Starmer often sounded like he didn’t, but apparently does now and Badenoch asked to lead leader because she had one and is going to stick to it.

Will both plans work? In a sense they can’t – but both can fail. That’s the nature of the political battle to govern.

For the Conservatives some say – including our valued columnist David Gauke today – the plan must change to stop chasing the right and look to the blue wall not the red. Others, many of them readers of this site, argue the problem has governing as Conservatives, with the Conservative trappings and being anything but ‘Conservative’. It’s odd that many who’ve said that’s what drove them into the arms of Reform are quieter about the fact Reform are not conservatives.

Others think the longer you let Kemi and her project go on, the worse things will be and that’s inevitable. Then others ask quite reasonably who is the answer? And if it were Robert Jenrick, does he solve the conundrum?

The truth is none of them know, they can’t.

If they turn out to be right, they’ll crow, but a stopped clock is right twice a day. Badenoch’s project which I’m betting doesn’t stop now, is unfolding over time to construct the detailed plan Starmer never had. The question is does it have that time? The sand in the hourglass is running faster than she’d hope but she’s clearly convinced she can turn that around. The concept is a belief that she and her team can change the Conservatives for the better. Now it may make things worse, but failure is not inevitable, and beware those who say it is.

Starmer’s never understood ‘change’ works both ways.

Whilst helpfully elusive on detail as a promise, he assumes his ‘project for change’ is only for the better and delivering it won’t mean change for the worse. It’s clearly a delusion and that dual equation is not resolved in by simply going further and faster. His plan I would contend is unravelling but it’s not inevitable. They might turn it around if they work at it. The way Morgan McSweeny looked on Thursday afternoon after hastily parking his bike in Westminster, I’d suggest he’s starkly aware of that.

Labour’s seeming desire to drive themselves over a political cliff, whilst tooting ‘a little trumpet’, is still not proof they will plummet. It just ups the odds. Frankly sticking to his plan, such as it is, is probably Starmer’s least worst bet unless he wants to boost the Tories by stopping things they demanded he stop or doing the things they’ve said they’d do. The harder left (or Green party as they are now called) always branded him Tory-lite.

What lessons for Reform?

After the night they had they are dishing out more than taking, lessons: ‘we said we were more than just a protest party and now you’ve seen it.’ ‘We told you we could hurt the Tories and Labour across England – we have’. Lessons Nigel Farage was quick to offer.

Now in charge of a number of councils they’ve got to run things, and for four years local government will get, as Farage told Chris Mason on Friday, the most ‘intense scrutiny it’s had in decades’. Because the exam question here (an analogy one of Badenoch’s team is particularly fond of) is Reform may be popular because they have no baggage from governing but can they govern?

Doubts and uncertainty on that are in play, and Farage himself acknowledge that. One lesson worth noting is the concept of Farage being Prime Minister is no more a hypothetical, dismissible idea than Ed Davey’s assertion that at the next election the Liberal Democrats will have more seats than the Tories. Neither is inevitable – both are possible.

On Times Radio a week ago, I was on with a longstanding Labour pundit and we both agreed, there would be prolific attempts to extrapolate lessons that the results might not actually point to because they’re a snap shot of the run up to a specific moment rather than an accurate projection of the whole race. Circumstance and context are ignored.

So have we learned anything? A bit.

Are the Tories finished? Might be but I doubt it. Is Badenoch toast? Doubt it – not yet. Will she stick to her own plan? Yes because it’s no clearer definitive alternative. Will Labour be a one term Government? Uncertain, hard, depends how they continue – and if Lucy Powell is drafted in to do Comms. Is this now the moment of that Nigel Farage is destined to be Prime Minister? Probably not the moment, but it’s an uncertain possibility. Can Ed Davey the less witty but Brandreth-esque Lib Dem leader take advantage to turn two-party into four-party politics? Certainly possible.

The only thing purely certain is all the parties will take the lessons that suit them right now, and move on from there. The lessons suggested to them, wanted and unwanted, by the commentariat might – for better or worse – be heeded or filed in a bin.

Here then should endeth ‘the lessons’.