Will 2024 be the year of ‘Starmer the radical’?

The Labour leader has made some big promises, writes Sean O’Grady. If he can deliver them, they’ll be transformational

The radical Age of Starmer awaits us (Getty)

It’s January. There are, probably, at most eight or nine months until the general election. Labour is about 15 to 20 percentage points ahead in the opinion polls and has been consistently ahead for a couple of years now. There is nothing on the horizon that will revolutionise the political scene and indeed, the economy may worsen and slip into recession as the year goes on. No government has come from this far behind to go on and win a general election.

So maybe we ought to start listening to Keir Starmer. I mean, properly listening, reading what he’s proposing – albeit he swings around a bit – and thinking about what a Labour government would be like. Indeed, what Britain would be like after a term – or, as Starmer envisages it, two terms – of a Labour government.

Maybe, too, we should start by taking him at his word. In that case, we may be sure that a few quite significant things would change, things that would change people’s lives pretty immediately and noticeably. Radical, indeed. For example, the Labour leader, in his new year speech, promises (or leastways strongly implies) that wages will be higher and sufficient to sustain family life, and a home would be affordable under a Labour government (even if it would take some years).