Critics say Starmer is no Attlee – and they’re right. Labour must look to the future, not the past | Martin Kettle

We raised a glass last Saturday evening, the four of us, to toast the 80th anniversary of the 1945 Labour government. None was old enough to remember the event itself, but three of us were born while Clem Attlee was prime minister. In a funny way, I still take a kind of childish pride from that inheritance, as if a piece of that distant era somehow transferred itself by osmosis into my DNA. A photograph of Attlee in old age, taken and given to me by the late Sally Soames, is a treasured possession too.

Our little group was certainly not alone this summer in marking Attlee’s anniversary. There have been TV documentaries and, most substantially, David Runciman’s fascinating Postwar series on BBC Radio 4. All of these start – and Runciman’s series also ends – with the same…