Starmer has betrayed the Labour Party, and he doesn’t want Corbyn around as a reminder

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To win the Labour leadership Starmer had to pretend to be a Labour traditionalist, like Corbyn (Reuters)

In the 2017 general election, the Labour voter turnout under Jeremy Corbyn was the largest for the party this century. The 2019 general election, though spun as a supposed Corbyn disaster, still had a turnout that beat the last previous efforts of Ed Miliband, Gordon Brown and Tony Blair.

The reason Corbyn was allowed on the leadership ballot in the first place was because the party was desperately trying to reconnect with its lost grassroots voters. Between the 1997 anti-Tory sleaze vote and Gordon Brown’s disaster in 2010, New Labour lost the party millions of voters. But under Corbyn Labour saw membership soar.

In order to win the Labour leadership job, Keir Starmer had to pretend to be a Labour traditionalist, like Corbyn. The commitments he made then he has now betrayed. He probably doesn’t want Corbyn around as a physical reminder of this.