Regeneration efforts in former coalmining communities have not led to enough job creation

Politics is hard because it invariably involves making choices between conflicting objectives. As Keir Starmer is discovering, the need to prioritise means you can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Labour wants faster growth, sounder public finances, decarbonisation, prosperity to be shared more evenly between the regions, tougher controls on migration and a reset of Britain’s relationship with the EU. Doing all these things simultaneously is near to impossible.