Keir Starmer must give the public meaningful reasons to vote Labour

Editorial: The tide may have turned against the Tories, but that in itself may not be enough to win an election

It is, at this point, very clearly Starmer’s election to lose (PA Media)

Historically, Labour governments have had an obligation to make it especially clear that they can be trusted to run the economy. No one has done so with more panache than Gordon Brown, who gave the Bank of England the power to set interest rates in his very first meeting with its governor after becoming chancellor in 1997. It was an act of supreme self-confidence, sending a message to the markets that they should believe in New Labour as much as everybody else did.

Whether Sir Keir Starmer is under the same sort of obligation is hard to tell, though it is clear that he believes himself to be. He has now finished setting out his “five missions” for government, as he promised he would at the beginning of the year (though not many people appear to have noticed). He has said that he will not commit to high levels of spending on public services.

Any such commitment would invite the usual attacks from the Conservatives, who still believe themselves to be the party of sound money despite more than a decade of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Such attacks might even be successful.