Starmer was never meant to be Labour’s prime minister – his leadership was doomed from the start | Neal Lawson

<p>His alliance with the party’s anti-Corbyn faction was a shotgun marriage that totally lacked vision. Now Labour is paying the price</p><p>Wes Streeting was always meant to be their Labour prime minister. The plan, hatched by a tiny clique of rightwing faction fighters, was this: find a candidate on whom they could fake a continuation Corbynism project to win the leadership. Then kick the ladder away from the people who backed them and the promises they made. At the next general election, given the scale of the Tory majority after 2019, get Labour back in the ring with more MPs and then hand over to Streeting. The real grownups would then be in charge and the subsequent election would be secured.</p><p>But no one reckoned with Covid, Tory turmoil and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/12/snp-may-face-disaster-after-sturgeon-but-the-flame-of-independence-still-burns">collapse of the SNP</a>. Suddenly Keir Starmer wasn’t going to just lead Labour to a better defeat and a springboard for victory next time. Against the odds, he was going to win. Just as Jeremy Corbyn was Labour’s accidental leader in 2015, Starmer was the party’s accidental prime minister in 2024.</p><p>Neal Lawson is director of the cross-party campaign organisation Compass</p><p><em><strong>Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/letters">letters</a> section, please <a href="mailto:mailto:guardian.letters@theguardian.com?body=Please%20include%20your%20name,%20full%20postal%20address%20and%20phone%20number%20underneath%20your%20letter.%20Letters%20are%20usually%20published%20with%20the%20author’s%20name%20and%20city/town/village.%20The%20rest%20of%20the%20information%20is%20for%20verification%2