Keir Starmer’s job in winning back the ‘red wall’ is tougher than it looks

He is a serious man for serious times, but the Labour leader will have to say that his party is ‘under new management’ thousands of times before the public notices, says Andrew Grice

But Starmer has passed the ‘imagine him in No 10’ test (PA)

The Labour Party is “under new management”. In the long run, perhaps Keir Starmer’s effective riposte to Boris Johnson will prove the most significant moment in a busy political week, which saw the report on Russian interference in the UK and Johnson’s first anniversary as prime minister.

By highlighting Jeremy Corbyn’s stance on Russia, Johnson helped Starmer distance himself from his predecessor. Corbyn’s response to the Salisbury nerve agent attack probably mattered more than we realised; the public noticed and it still came up in focus groups as the Tories planned last December’s election. Foreign and defence policy have been a left-right battleground inside Labour since before the Second World War. Corbyn’s anti-Americanism (not the same as being anti-Trump) and opposition to the UK nuclear deterrent has a long history in the party. Labour’s former “red wall” voters, who flocked to Johnson, will want to see Labour being strong on security matters before returning to the fold. Hence Starmer’s patriotism – and too much of it for the hard left’s liking.

Starmer would not have chosen antisemitism to be in the headlines but Corbyn’s legacy has put it there. The new leader has rightly tackled it head-on. Settling the legal case against former Labour staffers who spoke to the BBC’s Panorama programme enraged Corbyn and his remaining disciples, who say they had legal advice to the contrary. They still appear in denial on antisemitism.