A couple of days ago, on a Swiss flight from Seoul to Zurich, a pilot experienced a medical emergency. Three doctors on board assisted, one of the other pilots assumed the controls, and the plane landed without harm. Like many, you might be appalled that David Lammy wasn't on the passenger manifest, hammering on the cockpit door and offering the timeworn advice: 'You don't change the pilot during a flight!' But is that always true? As a nervous flyer, I can envision situations where changing the pilot mid-flight is necessary.
In contemporary British politics, only about five metaphors seem to exist, and the folly of a pilot switcheroo is definitely one of them. Today is a big day for it. Aviation sticklers will point out that, if you count the switch to auto-pilot, you almost always change the pilot mid-flight. Furthermore, most long-haul flights give at least three pilots a chance to shine—or not lose every contested seat in Hartlepool to Reform.
Perhaps that frequent switchover mirrors what has been happening in a country that has had six pilots in 10 years. After the May election results are fully in, we can expect an anguished debate about whether we should get another new pilot. Many across the political spectrum feel excessively tribal about stanning for their preferred pilot, but within Labour and without, I don't love any of the choices on offer. Several are having their own medical emergencies.
Here we are, with the captain having switched on the 'I'm Going Nowhere' signs. Starmer loyalists aren't the first to deploy this metaphor. Abraham Lincoln famously warned the Union 'Don't swap horses in the middle of the stream' during the 1864 presidential election, while 'Don't change the pilot' was a Franklin D. Roosevelt campaign slogan in 1936. If we all had a magic plane, we'd fly David Lammy back to those eras to admonish those guys that they are no Keir Starmer.
As for the specific airborne emergency Labour is dealing with, many will fall back on the example of Airplane! (1980). But vibes-wise, we might be dealing with the not-played-for-laughs plots of the films that movie spoofed. In Zero Hour! (1957), food poisoning from the in-flight meal fish knocks out the cockpit crew, leaving a proven liability as the only person on board. In Airport 1975 (1974), a pilot has a heart attack, then crashes into the cockpit of a passenger airliner, killing the flight engineer and first officer, and blinding the captain. This gives the flavour of the series of absurd disasters that have brought Labour to this point. Can one of Labour's not-wildly-gifted amateurs do it? There's a fun episode of MythBusters where hosts tested the 'only you can land this plane!' trope by trying to land a NASA plane simulator with only radio instructions from a pilot. They found they could land the plane, but would you want them to?
Meanwhile, postmortems will take place in a world with a literal jet fuel shortage—almost as if personnel changes are less relevant than the ineluctable forces of reality. We know Starmer has only a tiny amount of fuel left, but can probably run on fumes for a while. But looking at the results so far, investigators are surely asking whether the Labour party itself, in its current incarnation, has much in the tank. The other question is where the pilot-swapped craft would land. That Swiss flight ended up landing in Kazakhstan, somewhat to the right of Zurich. But you wouldn't put it past Labour contriving to land somewhere east of Seoul.
Having said all that, there are many people claiming to be very keen to support Lammy in his bid to barricade the cockpit door. 'I would suspect that the rumblings are going to start even before the king's speech on the 13th of May. [Keir Starmer] will be lucky to still be there by midsummer,' twinkled Nigel Farage on the pavement outside Havering town hall on Friday morning. 'But personally, I think he's a great chap, and I really want him to stay.'
Let's wrap up this metaphorical journey with a reminder that one of the most common romance scams sees a conman pretend he is a pilot. You want to believe him, you're thrilled he seems different, so you let him into your life. How does it end? He doesn't take you places you've never been before, expertise isn't overrated, and you'll be a whole lot poorer by the time he's finished.
