Aside from being 28% ahead in the polls, a sure sign that a party is on the threshold of power, is its leader receiving a ferocious roasting on the BBC’s Today show. Keir Starmer, laying out his “five missions” covering the economy, the NHS, crime, the climate crisis and education, was stress-tested in that boxing ring on Thursday morning. He stood up to it pretty well, as you’d expect of a former chief prosecutor.
The line of attack on him is the one that he will face through the next election: why had he broken the pledges he made in his leadership campaign? Pledges, the BBC’s Amol Rajan claimed, are for life, echoing attacks from right and left. The Tory chairman, Greg Hands, said that Starmer would “say anything if the politics of that moment suit him”. Momentum said: “His promises lie in tatters, ditched in favour of the reheated third-way Blairism typified by these latest, vapid ‘missions’.” Sky asked him after his speech: “Why should anyone believe a word you say?”
