Labour strategists won’t flinch at being called control freaks

Keir Starmer ‘has transformed what was once an openly splintered party into one where the hydra heads are laying in slumber’. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

“Never interrupt your enemy when they are making a mistake” is the old adage that Labour strategists often quoted with a wink as the Conservative party tore itself apart under Boris Johnson.

But two Tory leaders later, the party knows it needs to do much more to secure a decisive victory than simply ride into power on the coattails of apathy.