 Labour strategists are still concerned that no one in Britain has any idea as to what Keir Starmer stands for. But they have a plan to change that. It's to publish a 14,000 word essay with no policies. This was reported in The Sunday Times. They write, So Keir Starmer is to publish a 14,000 word mission statement to Labour members on the eve of the party's annual conference later this month. The Labour leader's lengthy essay for the Fabian Society is an attempt to reset his leadership and to answer those who have questioned what he and his party stand for. A source close to Starmer described the contents as an intellectualised version of his conference speech. However, the essay is not expected to include any fresh Labour policy announcements and will focus broadly on the themes of security and opportunity. A senior Labour figure said it's supposed to set out the Starmer credo. It's essentially the answer to those who say what do you believe in and what do you stand for? And I am sure that it will suffice to do that job. Ash, we've got another reset. I'm not sure what number this is, but when it comes to showing what Keir Starmer stands for, do you agree with the senior Labour figure who says the 14,000 word essay will suffice? I'm going to be really happy if it contains the phrase we must go forwards, not backwards, upwards, not forwards, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom. That's the really inspiring intellectualised vision that I can get behind. Look, there's a certain irony that's been pointed out by others that one of the things that Keir Starmer and his team keep saying is that Labour need to stop the naval gazing. They need to stop looking inwards. They need to look outwards at the country and speak to people. And yet, their only solutions have been to continue the forever wall within their organisation, punching left at every opportunity they get, and then going, you know, what's really going to speak to you, you know, the everyday voter dealing with the cost of living crisis, a 14,000 word essay. That's what you really need. When I'm talking about, you know, Keir Starmer needing a theory of change and an idea of how society works, I actually couldn't care less to read about it. Just fucking do it. Just demonstrate it in your messaging and your policy platform and the attack lines that you choose. Show, don't tell. That's basic politics 101. And it was something which you really saw with, you know, Corbyn and McDonald actually. I remember when they tried to do their populist relaunch. I think this was January, either 2016, 2017, memory escapes me. And it was something which was being like badged as a bit of a relaunch and it didn't go that well. And they were definitely doing too much telling and not enough showing. You then got them in the context of a general election and a manifesto and they were animated by it and it became a lot more clear and a lot more purposeful. And you think that Keir Starmer having, you know, lurched from failed relaunch to failed relaunch. We had the Hartley Paul relaunch. We had the Batley and Spen relaunch. You know, we had the, we're going big on fairness relaunch. We'd had the dog theft relaunch. You'd think that he would go maybe this, you know, kind of new Coke rebrand every five minutes isn't actually going to do it for me. And I should try and offer something to the country. And like, look, I'm probably going to have to read this fucking thing for my job. But I just want you to know, Michael, that I don't want to. I don't want to read 14,000 words of Keir Starmer. I want to read the new Sally Rooney, you know, in the bath with some candles. I'm going to read 14,000 words from the most boring man who's ever lived. Hopefully it'll come with an executive summary. I hope it's summarizable because 14, 14,000 is like a dissertation like that. That's, you know, I suppose people say maybe, maybe political leaders writing books is a good thing. Like Bernie did it. Bernie Sanders did it. Pablo Iglesias did it. You do have to have some interesting ideas though. And probably you have to, you know, even if there's no fully fleshed out policies, you have to say some of the things you would do were you to enter power. I just want to go to a couple more details from it because we just have a couple bit more information from it, which is that the article is being written with the help of his former aide Paul Evendant and the former Times columnist, Philip Collins, who wrote Tony Blair's final conference speech. You know, if I had gone for a Tony Blair, I'd go for one of the ones around 97 when he was still winning, not the one when he was already considered completely toxic. Although I suppose Starmer's considered quite toxic. So maybe that's Philip Collins's speciality. We also have, you mentioned naval gazing. Apparently this is supposed to solve that. This is also from the Times. A senior party insider said, Starmer wrote the essay while he was on his summer tour and meeting voters. The party lost at the last general election. It's about where we are now as a party and where we are going. It's about turning the page and ending the naval gazing. So this essay is about ending naval gazing. Now, Ash, I'm not sure what the opposite of naval gazing is, but for me, it's not 14,000 word essays. Michael, can you imagine if I sent you 14,000 word WhatsApp message all about me and what people think about me and what I might do next and what maybe I got wrong in the past and what I'm like now. And then I said, but by the way, this is really not about me. It's not naval gazing. This is really about you. Would you believe that? Would you think that's the single most delusional shit I've ever heard in my life? What's the meme? I think you shared the meme, which is, I'm not going to read that, but I'm happy for you or I'm so sorry, whatever it says. I mean, I ain't reading all that. I ain't reading all that. I mean, look, this is this is the the apotheosis of naval gazing. And I think there's something serious here. And you can kind of see by the tapping up of Philip Collins, whose main big idea in the last 12 months has been Starmer should purge the left and purge it hard, right? That's been kind of the main thing that he's been saying. And so by tapping up Philip Collins to write this thesis on, you know, Starmarism and labor and blah, blah, blah. I think what that shows is that it's going to outline what the priorities are of this particular faction. It's not about getting the party ready for power. It's not about getting the party ready for a general election. It's about consolidating the grip of a particular faction on the labor party machinery and using electability as a flimsy pretext to do so. You know, spoiler alert, spoiler alert, that's what I think is going to happen in this piece. One thing that I would say is that I feel that, you know, Starmar has almost learned the worst lessons from lairism, which is all triangulation and no punch, you know, nothing pithy, nothing memorable. You certainly know real attack when it comes to going for the conservatives. Tony Blair, obviously, his politics are about as far from mine as I can imagine, particularly on foreign policy and public ownership and stuff that really, really matters to me. But in terms of a political operator, being a political operator, he had a killer instinct. And he also knew, like actually, when it comes to your vision, people just want to know what's going to fit on a flashcard. And you just hammer those lines again and again and again until the public really gets it. This is the opposite. This is just all waffle. So unless it's 14,000 words of a novel really about, you know, four young hipsters trying to make it in the world of literature and having sexual adventures along the way, I don't think anyone's going to be interested.