Keir Starmer needs one big, defining idea if he’s to avoid being another doomed Labour leader Margaret Thatcher and Harold Wilson show the way for a struggling opposition leader: offer a serious argument, not a set of policies. Labour often gives the impression it would rather do without a leader. In 1918 the fledgling Labour Party won the right, for the first time, to be regarded as the official opposition. With 57 seats, Labour was the largest single party in opposition to the triumphant coalition of Lloyd George and Bonar Law. However, the party did not have a leader as such. It had an annually elected chairman, but refused to upgrade William Adamson to leader. The forgotten Liberal Donald Maclean became the leader of the opposition instead.