As he savoured his moment of glory after his triumph in the polls in December, followed by Britain leaving the EU Treaty in January, Boris Johnson thought he had Europe at his feet and rushed into law an act stipulating that the UK would terminate all negotiations by December 2020.

“We are a strong team”, declared Keir Starmer at the end of an hour long webinar conducted by his deputy Angela Rayner and himself. They were answering questions emailed in by party members. It was an impressive outing for the leadership duo, demonstrating their radicalism and commitment to a better future. There will be more webinars over the coming week.

The dead cat strategy was invented by the Tories’ election guru Lynton Crosby, but it was explained most clearly by one beneficiary of his dark arts, the then Telegraph columnist Boris Johnson, in one of his typical rants against the EU.

Labour wasted a year after the election defeat in 2010 failing to rebut the Tory claim that the 2008 financial crisis was “Labour’s mess”. Labour mustn’t make the same mistake again with the COVID-19 crisis.

It is possible that the economic and social chaos inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic will overwhelm us and that questions about the ‘big issues of yesterday’ will then appear wholly irrelevant or painfully trivial. But all that aside, we face three Brexit scenarios.

Did you know that between 1997 and 2010 Labour lost over 5 million votes - most of them under Tony Blair? When I included that fact in an online article a senior figure in Progress riposted “They were Blair’s to lose.” No so, I replied. 1997 was a team triumph. Blair was a brilliant communicator, but he inherited from John Smith a party in great nick. He was supported by a formidable team, including Becket, Brown, Blunkett, Cook, Mowlam, and Prescott. Most importantly, post-1983, the heavy lifting had been done by former Labour leader and now Honorary President of the LME, Neil Kinnock.

The negotiations between London and Brussels are not about trade but the totality of how the British state is organized. Reporting on the BBC and in the London media once again is letting down British citizens by discussing the negotiations simply as aiming for a free trade deal. Ideology lies at the heart of the British approach.

As far as I can see, the Government has binned last week’s policy. Matt Hancock has just said on Marr “herd immunity” is not government policy. The reign of experts did not last long. Johnson and ministers do not know what to do. 

“If Johnson self-isolates, how will we know?” Thanks for that joke goes to Tim Walker, the gallant Lib Dem, who stood down in Canterbury to help Rosie Duffield. He defied then party leader Jo Swinson. Happily, Duffield won while Swinson lost her seat.

My old boss, the BBC political editor John Cole, had a perceptive test of political leadership. Good leaders, he said, had to be ready  to “chip away at the prejudices of their followers”. 

It looks as though Lisa Nandy gets it. “Steadying the ship isn’t enough. Labour needs to change or it will die”, she says. Richard Burgon doesn’t.