We are in the golden hour. That may sound warm and pleasant – as if we have entered those long-promised sunlit uplands – but you need only look around at the economic devastation wreaked by Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng in the past week to know that’s not what I have in mind. Rather, I am using the phrase in the sense deployed by police: the golden hour refers to the period immediately after a crime has been committed, when evidence is in abundance and detectives need to move fast to collect it. We are in the political equivalent of that period right now, and it’s Keir Starmer who cannot afford to waste a second.
Of course, the Labour leader begins with an advantage denied to most investigators: the identity of the perpetrators is already known. Hence the epic shift in the opinion polls, with the Conservatives now a staggering 33 points behind Labour, according to YouGov. If that swing were uniform across the country (which it won’t be), there would only be three Tories left in the next House of Commons. Three.
