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Columns

The moment Starmer lost control of the Labour left

8 June 2024

9:00 AM

8 June 2024

9:00 AM

‘Tony Blair walks on water.’ Decades ago this statement led a Times photographer and me to the front door of the dismal Hackney North & Stoke Newington Labour party offices. It was 23 April 1997, and a fateful general election loomed. I was my newspaper’s 46-year-old political sketchwriter, and Labour’s local candidate was a 43-year-old MP called Diane Abbott.

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