There’s never much va-va-voom about Keir Starmer’s rhetoric, which is heavily dependent on well-trodden metaphor. After the “sunlight of hope” when he arrived in Downing Street and things “getting worse before they get better” when the new Government had to level with voters about the scale of its task, the Starmer speechwriters opted for another boilerplate classic: the “light at the end of the tunnel”.
Given that this was his first speech to Labour conference as Prime Minister, he could be forgiven for a bit of jubilation. He got that over in the first three minutes. No one watching Starmer could doubt that they were watching an earnest, diligent figure who had worked hard for victory.
But he also took the stage after weeks of unforced errors over donations and infighting in his inner team, somehow on the back foot while promising the great leap forward.
In the manner of an Old Testament prophet turning up with woeful tidings, the veteran pollster Sir John Curtice emerged with a dire prediction of Labour’s outlook, highlighting the shallow nature of the overall majority on a historically low share of the vote. “Consequently,” Curtice concluded dourly, “the pool of voters willing to give it the benefit of the doubt is unusually small.”
That message lurks uneasily beneath the celebratory mood in Liverpool as Starmer has watched his popularity ratings tank and a querulous mood in his own ranks over cuts to pensioner’s winter fuel........