Keir Starmer kicked off the political new year with a fascinating and revealing 45-minute-long interview with the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. The format was another sign of the No 10 comms team changing up its game – it was the nearest thing that public service broadcasting gets to an ask me anything (AMA). Throughout the lengthy exchange the real Starmer was on show as he calmly and doggedly fielded all questions.

And that was the problem. This wasn’t an attempt to reframe the political narrative for the coming year, nor was it a clear exposition of Labour’s “soft left” political economy – nationalisation, workers’ rights and the green transition. There was a complete absence of storytelling, just reliance on a handful of carefully practised phrases, the abiding sin of this Labour government: the elevation of tactics above strategy.

Responding to questions about his own, and his government’s, deep unpopularity, Starmer planted himself firmly – and repeatedly – on a “five-year mandate” that he argued was “in the national........

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