HOW is Labour to get out of the doldrums? There is high anxiety as the party’s cash reserves are down to one month’s payroll and a quarter of the staff face redundancy. The loss of well over 50,000 members is a mortal blow to the party’s finances but it is symptomatic of a wider malaise. The latest poll of polls has Labour on 33 per cent, well below the Tories on 42 per cent. The persistence of this lag is creating a crisis of confidence in the Starmer leadership which the squeaky by-election win in Batley and Spen has barely suppressed.