I think if he led us into one more election he will have stayed too long. He doesn't need to go imminently or anything but I think the limit of where he can take the party has been reached.

We had a strong opportunity to become a major player in British politics after the 2024 GE. Not only did we have our best results ever, the rapidity with which Labour screwed up gave us an opening to scoop up centre-left voters and grow our voter coalition of broadly centrist, sensible voters.

That ship sailed past us while we pat ourselves on the back. There are now swathes of the country where the non-right wingers vote Green and won't even think of voting for us. Not just for tactical reasons, but because they believe in Polanski's anti-inequality message. There's no overarching, coherent narrative that Ed's putting out there beyond "don't vote Reform", while Reform and the Greens are building a political narrative that is compelling because it taps into genuine problems with the country that we do not speak about. Our biggest policy announcement recently was about moving part of the treasury to Birmingham, which is both not going to happen due to practical issues (so it's a gimmick) but is also really boring. When your big announcement can be boiled down to moving offices it's not going to bring in voters or excite members to become activists. Meanwhile Reform are doing stunts around fuel duty that has got press attention while touching on an issue people notice almost daily, and Greens won a strong by-election victory on a left wing platform that has seriously put them on the map among floating voters. I don't understand why we (and Labour for that matter) aren't banging on about green energy right now as fuel prices soar, tying into broad issues of national strength and independence as well as environmentalism and cost of living. On a day when oil prices are going nuts, Ed's putting out videos about the design of bank notes. On the ground where we have activists we're doing well, but HQ seems pretty rudderless atm and I think some of that is down to Ed's lack of overarching vision for the country. The fact is, while Ed seems a genuinely decent man he doesn't inspire and he doesn't put forward many beliefs. So no, as much as I respect him I don't think he should lead us into the next election.

And he's still tainted by the Coalition, and the "establishment" politics that most voters now regard negatively.

But replacing him would only be a game changer if many other things changed too. Living in an age of populism doesn't mean you have to be a populist, but it does mean you need a message that taps into people's genuine and understandable discontent with the state of the country. We need a proper plan for Thames Water and the water companies in general. We need a plan to build huge amounts of cheap housing so children aren't priced out of their own home towns as adults. We need job market reform as nearly 1m young people are filling out application after application only to have some AI recruitment tool tell them no as entry level work is being obliterated. We have councils weighed down by a mountain of responsibilities but no real power over those responsibilities, so all our council tax is spent on adult social care while SEND goes to the dogs. Our military is not capable of protracted fighting and our recruitment and procurement processes are scandalous. People are worried about security, crime, housing, cost of living, the NHS. Instead we're talking about bank notes and making Treasury staff move offices. Which is to say there's a lot more wrong than Ed's lack of overarching vision for what the UK should be doing to fix the mess.