[ad_1]
When Sir Keir Starmer became Labour leader in 2020, few ever believed he would become prime minister.
The party was reeling from its worst performance at the ballot box since 1935, riven by internal divisions, under fire over its record of tackling antisemitism and facing a seemingly unassailable Boris Johnson atop an 80-seat majority.
Sir Keir was billed as the Neil Kinnock of 21st-century Labour: the man who would do the hard yards of rehabilitation to get Labour back into the running for whoever came next.
But an extraordinary set of events changed all of that: a global COVID pandemic, the largely self-inflicted collapse of the Johnson administration, and the debacle of Liz Truss’s 44 days in office.
All the political capital won at the ballot box in 2019 has long been spent, and the Sunak government is now in huge deficit.
Labour, ahead in the polls for the past 15 months, is now 28 points ahead, according to latest YouGov polling. Rishi Sunak may have calmed the chaos. But he isn’t closing the gap.
The Tories are in despair. As one former cabinet minister ruefully remarked to me: “Oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them, and we are f*****.”
Sir Keir, who said back in 2020 when he became Labour leader that he had a mountain to climb to turn things around before the next general election in 2024, now has the summit in sight.
Gifted the climbing kit by his political adversaries, he now wants to use the rest of this year to build his own case with voters who might have fallen out of love with the Conservatives but are still unsure about him.
‘Five missions’ to answer the big question from voters
Recent polling suggests that when voters are asked what Sir Keir’s Labour stand for, the most common answer is…
[ad_2]
