I am with Backwoodsman, Doug and DtG on this row. I kept thinking of that little rhyme:

Here lies the body of old John Gray
Who died maintaining his right of way.
He was right - dead right - as he walked along
But he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong.

Unless Labour can get elected, it is almost powerless, though I would say Starmer is making a good fist of the limited power that comes with opposition. He is not alone: the SNP are also having some success in challenging Johnson in PMQ. But in the end, it is always the government that holds the power. And, for Labour, as the review and cliche has it, there is a mountain to climb.   Having the largest membership of any party in Europe is of little value if no-one except party members vote for you. By all accounts, this was how Cummings got the Brexit vote he wanted: do not concentrate on those who will always vote for or always against you: all your attention needs to be on the undecided. It is a hard truth that Labour could in a sense afford to lose virtually all its members: it is far less than the number of votes they lost by. 'According to the 2011 census, 263,346 people answered "Jewish" to the voluntary question on religion, compared with 259,927 in the previous count of 2001. However, this final figure is considered an undercount' (Wikipedia). So it is around 50% of the party membership. Finding a way to make peace - or at least an accommodation - is important. And, as I said, I know traditional Labour voters who didn't because of the anti-Semitism row, so this argument has a 'voting power equivalent' of the same scale as the entire membership.

Climbing the mountain starts now, not just before the next election.

Now it is also true, as Jim was arguing, that there is no point getting Labour elected if it has jettisoned all its principles to do so. But I don't believe that would happen. In any case, when I come to cast my vote, I decide whether they have so weakened their principles that I vote elsewhere, or that they retain enough that they still get my vote. In the meantime, I think they are right to concentrate on what it will take to climb the mountain.