His shambolic U-turn over the Rochdale candidate is Starmer’s biggest blunder yet

The time it took the Labour leader to drop his would-be MP for sharing antisemitic conspiracy theories suggests he’ll find the speed and pressure of making calls at No 10 a worrying challenge, writes John Rentoul

Ali was initially backed by the party for his swift apology and retraction of the remarks. But, in a dramatic climbdown 48 hours later on Monday night, the party said its support for him had been withdrawn (Getty)

Keir Starmer is guilty of two kinds of flip-flop. The first kind is from positions he adopted in order to win the leadership of a party still in the grip of Corbynism. Those U-turns showed a cynicism that sometimes took the breath away, but the logic of “what it takes” was irresistible.

The second kind is more serious: where he has made the wrong decision himself, not to appease Corbynite party members but because he thought they were the right choices for a mainstream centre-left party of government.

On Azhar Ali, the by-election candidate in Rochdale, on the £28bn green investment plan, and on defining a woman, Starmer stuck stubbornly to a position before eventually conceding that his critics were right.