“MING vase strategy” is another pundit cliche — like “big-tent strategy” or “grown-ups back in charge” — which tries using  recently made up SW1 “common-sense” lore to narrow political possibilities.

The theory is Keir Starmer is applying a “Ming vase strategy,” which means avoiding risk at all costs so Labour’s poll lead doesn’t smash to the ground.

The phrase first surfaces in 1996, when the Guardian reported Roy Jenkins likened Tony Blair’s attitude to his poll lead like “a man carrying a delicate Ming vase across a polished museum floor: one slip and it crashes.”

As a general principle — if you are in the lead, don’t get overconfident and screw it up — it’s hard to object.

But pundits want “Ming vase strategy” to carry a deeper meaning, that Labour must be politically cautious and promise little to win elections.

It’s part of a “centrists-don’t-change stuff” message, which is trying to look like eternal wisdom, but isn’t.

One of the appeals to “ancient wisdom” here is that the “Ming vase strategy” is something that “Roy Jenkins famously said.” 

But Jenkins wasn’t a political Yoda who wanted Labour to win elections. He was a centrist who was happy to try destroy Labour’s chances if the party strayed too far from a pro-market consensus.

Jenkins backed Blair in the 1990s, but he also set out to split the Labour Party in the 1980s: Jenkins set up the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in 1981 because he said Labour had gone too left wing.

Jenkins’s supporters said he and the SDP were opposing Tony Benn-style extremism, but Jenkins  also stood against Labour under both Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock.

The SDP split Labour’s vote and helped Thatcher stay in power. Jenkins didn’t want the Ming vase of Blairite Labour damaged, but he was happy to try smash up even the “soft-left” Labourism of Kinnock.

The other “eternal truth” that Britain’s pundits want to be treated with reverence is that Blair won in 1997 by “moderate” lack of promise, and this is the only way to win. Again the question is , what do you treasure like a Ming vase, and what pots  would you prefer to hit with a hammer.

Blair didn’t treat socialist reform cautiously, he was happy to smash things like the commitment to renationalising rail or water to the ground. Instead he treated things like sticking-to-Tory-spending-plans with care and reverence.

Blair did not expect a landslide in 1997, but actually Tory collapse gifted the party a victory that they could have won even without him jettisoning so many principles.

Similarly Keir Starmer’s “Ming vase strategy” means taking all his 10 pledges for renationalising water or taxing the rich or better benefits for the poor or treating migrants well and smashing them up like plates at a Greek wedding, while treating Rishi Sunak’s tax policy like it was a priceless.

It is possible to win by this strategy, to crawl into office while treating Tory policy like priceless china.

It may even gift a larger majority, as the Tory press tone down their attacks on Labour a bit. But Tory collapse means it’s not necessary.   And keeping Tory policies as if the were historic relics that must be preserved will leave social inequality unchanged, so many of us won’t even end up with a pot to piss in. 

Give Whips a crack?

ARE you looking for summer reading ? Want a page-turner for the beach? Can I suggest Tory “bonkbuster” novel Whips by former Boris Johnson aide Cleo Watson ?

I know many of you will use the holidays to read classic novels or get involved with  serious political economy. I don’t want to put you off digging into, say, Tom Kromer’s rediscovered classic novel of being dirt poor in the Depression, Waiting for Nothing, or Luke Hilyard’s Enough, his new analysis of the economics of the super- rich.

But if you are looking for something lighter, why not get stuck into the super-sexy world of Westminster Conservatives? I’ve got a lot of time for popular fiction: detective books, say, or “sex ’n’ shopping” stories can be pretty satisfying.

Popular fiction always has something to say about the world we live in, even if speaks in a crass or shallow way. The skills needed for an entertaining, “unserious” story — the economy of prose, directness, the balance between the comfort of predictability and the joy of surprise — can be as demanding as “literary fiction.” 

I’ve always had a soft spot for Jackie Collins who pulled off all these balancing acts with great efficiency, while being a “raunchy moralist,” engaging  readers with “sexy” stories while simultaneously implying they were all a bit corrupt.

Cleo Watson’s prose might not have Jackie Collins’s skill levels, but given she is a former political adviser, not a novelist, it’s pretty impressive. The novel is efficient, with enough humour, shock and smut to grab the reader, and mostly holds together.

What’s especially useful about the book is this is a picture of Tory political morality from the inside — and it looks as rotten as from the outside.

Watson was an adviser to Theresa May and then Boris Johnson, so the political detail is accurate — there are even some useful primers for parliamentary procedure smuggled between the sex scenes.

Watson isn’t trying to present Westminster at its best, but even so, it’s clear that the view from within the party is bad. 

Three young women set out for a career in Westminster. Through them we find ministers are shallow careerists, riven with personal rivalry but uninterested in governing, MPs are easily swung by career promises from donors, polling is often just a dodgy form of lobbying, and Westminster women are expected to use sex as currency, and that’s just how it is.

The sex itself is often about exhibitionism or exploitation as much as pleasure, which seems fitting. The only “worthy” Tories are backbenchers with a specific interest in one or other limited cause,  there is no overarching social ambition in the party.

There is a “feel-good” bit of plot that is rather glued on at the end, but if you want a light read that tells a lot of the “feelbad” truths of Toryism along the way, this could be for you.

Follow Solomon Hughes on X @SolHughesWriter.