'Safety-first Keir Starmer is under pressure to unveil a bold vision for UK'
A spectre is haunting Labour – the spectre of failure.
The ghost at the party in Liverpool is bitter memories of past disappointments. They must make sure the 2024 election is not like 1992 or 2015. It’s why Keir Starmer & Co constantly warn that complacency is an enemy, champagne to be kept on ice until after next year’s election.
Yes, the doors were blown off in Rutherglen. His resurgent Labour is streets ahead in the polls. Weak Rishi Sunak’s warring Conservatives look a spent force, with no boost after their conference train crash last week.
Yet the deal is far from clinched when 50-plus of Harold Wilson’s unpredictable long weeks are probably ahead for Harold Macmillan’s unexpected events to occur. Inheriting the fewest MPs since 1935 means if Starmer is to end 13 years of Tory rule, it’s more likely to be with a small 1964 Wilson majority than Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Getty Images)None of that is to deny Labour expectations are growing, with Shadow ministers instructed to hammer home the case for change to bang fresh nails into Sunak’s coffin. Big business recognises when change is on the way too. Google is among the corporations anxious to join the party this week on the east bank of the Mersey. The cash is certainly rolling in, Labour recently banking more than the Tories.
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There was £3million supermarket scion Lord Sainsbury, and a £2.2m gift from Autoglass tycoon Gary Lubner. More will follow from high-rollers. Wealthy fatcats leave me queasy but money follows power. It shows the loaded consider Starmer a far superior medium and long-term bet.
Overshadowed in part by the carnage in Israel and Palestine, when Labour’s conference closes on Wednesday lunchtime we will hopefully have a better idea of what it would actually do in government. “Why not the Tories” is an easy question to answer. Folk will be poorer at the next election in 2024 than at the last in 2019.
Now safety-first Starmer is under mounting pressure to unveil bold, vivid and radical reasons for people to vote for his kind of change.
With some justification, he’s able to argue that caution is working and it is a marathon not a sprint. Holding back goodies until nearer the election could be a strategy to guard against boredom. But fortune favours the bold as well as the brave, and Labour building momentum would keep a desperate Sunak on the back foot.
Sideshow Sunak is planning to pop up in Nottinghamshire to scream for headlines, a petulant PM fighting against irrelevancy. Yearning for change is an unstoppable electoral force. Now Starmer must spell out why he is that change.
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