Is Labour ready for a general election – and for power?

If Rishi Sunak hoped to catch Labour off-balance by calling an early election on July 4, his advantage is unlikely to last more than a few hours, says John Rentoul

Labour leader Keir Starmer announced his general election campaign, saying: ‘Together, we can stop the chaos – and start to rebuild Britain’ (Reuters)

Labour ought to be ready for the election. It is already more than four-and-a-half years since the last one. Keir Starmer bravely insists that he is ready. Labour officials say that the manifesto is ready to be printed, which it may be – but there are quite a few loose threads that the party thought it had more time to sort out.

This is hardly surprising, considering the huge change in the party that has happened in that time, from Starmer’s election on a Corbyn-lite programme, to something close to full-throttle New Labour.

Indeed, the Labour leader is currently in the middle of a series of meetings with trade union leaders to discuss the finer points of the party’s employment rights policy. There are many in the leader’s office who think that the work of revision is not finished, which could set the scene for a fractious meeting of party and union bigwigs to agree to the manifesto.