RUTHLESSNESS, often regarded as an unattractive characteristic in a politician, is invariably for a political leader, particularly one seeking to become prime minister, a basic requirement.

The person sitting in Downing St must, to be a success, possess a range of characteristics not least good judgement, limitless concentration and a spine of iron.

After what will be 14 years in opposition come the next General Election, Labour cannot afford to suffer another defeat and see the Conservatives continue in power, able to shift the political axis further rightwards.

And so everything Sir Keir Starmer does up to polling day is geared to one thing: getting into Downing St whatever or whoever become political casualties along the way.

And so it came as no surprise last week that the mild-mannered MP for Holborn and St Pancras not only jettisoned for good his old boss and ex-chum Jeremy Corbyn but also bluntly told the hard Left to take a hike if it didn’t like his New Labour makeover.

One can imagine those sultans of spin Alistair Campbell and Lord Peter Mandelson chuckling into their late night herbal tea over at Tony’s place.

It was the equalities watchdog’s decision to lift Labour out of special measures over its past failings on antisemitism, which gave Sir Keir the opportunity to banish Mr Corbyn once and for all.

“Let me be very clear,” said the Labour leader, “Jeremy Corbyn will not stand at the next General Election as a Labour Party candidate. What I said about the party changing I meant and we are not going back.”

Declaring the changes made to the party as “permanent, fundamental, irrevocable,” the chief comrade bluntly told those, who didn’t like the move away from Corbynism, “nobody is forcing you to stay”.

Mr Corbyn, who now sits awkwardly as an Independent MP after Labour suspended him over the antisemitism row, branded Sir Keir's remarks a "flagrant attack on the democratic rights of Islington North Labour Party members…and should be opposed by anybody who believes in the value of democracy.”

Socialist soulmate John McDonnell, who served as Mr Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor, rallied round, saying that undermining the rights of local members to choose their election candidate “flies in the face of everything that we stand for and that’s why it’s a mistake”.

Those on the hard Left decry Sir Keir’s move as a bid to shamelessly purge the Corbynist faction and argue that it contradicts what he pledged to members when he wanted their votes to become leader.

Rather than go quietly, however, the 73-year-old ex-leader looks set to continue to be a thorn in Sir Keir’s side and is likely to seek the Labour nomination for his constituency of four decades regardless.

However, there’s a slight technical problem. His suspension as a Labour MP means the normal vetting rules in the constituency won’t apply and so the ruling NEC will take over the process of candidate selection there. Naturally, it will choose someone else.

So, the only option left to the ex-party leader would be to stand as an independent, a move that would automatically expel him from Labour. Yet Mr Corbyn has a loyal band of local supporters and last time round won a not inconsiderable majority of 26,188.

It’s perfectly possible he could retain the seat and become Irritant-in-Chief to PM Starmer in a Corbynite faction, raging away on the Labour backbenches.

As the happy comrades gathered in Edinburgh for this weekend’s Scottish Labour spring conference, it was intriguing to see Stephen Flynn, the SNP’s Westminster leader, deliver a stinging spoiler, claiming Sir Keir was “selling the Labour Party’s soul to enter Downing St,” and stressing how Scotland “deserves better than a choice of two Tory Prime Ministers" at the 2024 election.

Yet after a week that saw the political earthquake of Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation and a poll that placed Labour just two points behind the SNP in Westminster voting intentions, some might feel Mr Flynn’s outburst was born more out of fear than disgust.

In his speech to conference, Anas Sarwar sought to capitalise on the SNP’s destabilisation, wooing Nationalist voters to go over to Labour. “Put your trust in us,” urged the Scottish Labour leader gently. “Let’s come together to boot the Tories out of Downing Street,” he added.

And today Sir Keir will tell those Scots who have “given up on Labour” to “take another look” at it, declaring: “The hope Scotland needs is coming. The change Scotland needs is coming. A Labour Government is coming.”

While Labour is well ahead of the Tories in the polls and appears to be closing the gap on the SNP in Scotland, the eminent psephologist Professor Sir John Curtice warned its support for Brexit could hamper the bid to win over Nationalist voters and pondered “whether they can do more than chip at the edges”.

He said: “Labour will find it quite difficult to persuade Yes voters, the majority of whom wish to be back inside the EU, to vote for a party that has no intention of rejoining the European Union.”

The Blairification of Labour under its new management now seems all but complete. It’s a process that’s hardly surprising given the 2019 election debacle and because what Labour needs more than anything is victory and Sir Tony managed to make history with three consecutive election wins.

The Starmer calculation is probably, while the hard Left might complain mightily about Mr Corbyn’s expulsion as the party moves purposefully towards the centre, where are most comrades going to go given that the fundamental choice at the election will be between having a freshly-baked Labour government or a reheated Conservative one?

The ex-leader and his allies might be smarting at what they regard as Sir Keir’s anti-democratic ruthlessness but on the morning after polling day, if the Labour knight has his feet under the Downing St table, he will undoubtedly believe it will have all been worth it.

As someone somewhere recently observed, politics is a brutal trade.