Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership has always dramatised a political paradox. On the one hand, his primary task is to reassure the public that the party it comprehensively rejected in 2019 — Labour’s worst result since 1935 — has changed and can be trusted to govern dependably and without ideological mania.
On the other, Starmer must also persuade the electorate that, if he makes it to No 10, he will deliver transformative change, repair Britain’s faltering public services and extract hope from the bleak post-Brexit political landscape.
