Jeremy Corbyn has vacated the building. The slate is now clean!

Politically, we can move forward. No more can the right-wing press and their predominantly foreign paymasters lambast the whole Labour Party as being anti-Semitic, terrorist friendly, or woolly-jumpered pie-in-the-sky fantasists. Corbyn, for good, bad or indifferent has been bludgeoned from every pillar and post from John O’Groats to Land’s End.

The picture of Corbyn as some sort of anti-Christ has forever been imprinted in the nations psyche and judgement on his stewardship of the Labour Party has already been set in stone. The way he has been portrayed will not allow for a renaissance of Corbynism. 

You will have your own view on Jeremy Corbyn, but the fact of the matter is that he became unelectable. And that’s it, he’s gone!

With the election of Sir Keir Starmer as the new leader, the Party has a clean slate. The divisions that have rankled over the last five years under Corbyn now have a chance to heal. The Party owes it to itself to come together behind its new leader. And let’s be in no doubt, Starmer’s election mandate is far too big to deny him control of future direction and policy. Factionalism within the Party has to sit this one out, because the sooner Starmer gets down to the real work the better.

His first job is to put a competent Shadow Cabinet together that will hold the Johnson Government to account. For far too long Boris Johnson has got away with bluff and bluster, megaphone politics. Detail is not his forte. His legacy is already written, a disastrous withdrawal from the EU and a catastrophically inept response to Coronavirus. Starmer has to put this man forensically on the spot and force him to explain his every decision. Something his predecessor could never do, no matter how many emails he read from the public.

For me, Starmer has to pin down Johnson on specifics. When are supplies of PPE going to arrive in hospitals and Care Homes? When is testing going to be effective and widespread? When can we see the light at the end of this terrible tunnel? Until these questions, and others, are answered satisfactorily, Starmer needs to keep his distance from the Johnson Government. There should be no pacts, no leg-ups, no help. Just flat-out scrutiny.

It’s Starmer’s job to skewer the myth of Johnson and the Tory’s and put Labour and this country back on the road to recovery.