Keir Starmer won't want my advice on how to salvage his reputation - he needs to hear it anyway, writes Andy Coulson

As far as most people are concerned, his story's over.

It isn't. The speech was the easy bit.

A dignified resignation is a single good day, and you have to work pretty hard to mess it up. Reputations are settled in the months and years that follow the speech when the cameras have gone and there's no power left to lose. That's the bit leaders often get wrong.

So, here’s some advice that Sir Keir Starmer isn’t asking for …  especially from me. The five things that will decide whether this is the end of his reputation or the start of its third act.

1. Taking the blame in the speech is easy. The test is the next few months and years of not relitigating it, not briefing against old colleagues, not writing the score-settling memoir. The leaders who recover resist the urge to keep defending themselves.

2. Disappear before you come back. The instinct now will be to stay visible, do the interviews, protect the record. Resist it. Absence reads as dignity; over-explaining reads as grievance. Go quiet and let the dust settle.

3. Be generous to whoever replaces him. No shadow-leadership from the backbenches, no "if only they'd listened to me." Magnanimity to your successor is the rarest thing in politics and the most remembered.

4. Choose one thing to be remembered for and go and live it - a defence of the record in deeds rather than words. Pursue a cause, a contribution, something concrete enough to become the headline instead of the failure.

5.⁠ ⁠Play the long game. Reputation compounds for years, and the first big decision comes fast: does he stay on the backbenches and do the unglamorous work of a constituency MP or do a runner? How a person behaves with nothing left to gain is the truest test there is and the foundation of any comeback.

And finally, dodge the bitterness bullet and remember that, however crowded that staircase has become in the last decade, your picture will be there.

____________________

Andy Coulson is the founder of Coulson Partners and host of the Crisis What Crisis podcast.

LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.

The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

To contact us email opinion@lbc.co.uk