This is the wail of the floating voter. I start every election a deliberate floater. An open mind staves off tedium. The only alternative is going on holiday. For a radical, to float is also to enjoy a moment of hope. Might there be, somewhere in the dark cloud of current politics, just a glimmer of light?

In their first week or so, most election campaigns hit rock bottom. So far in this one there are still no manifestos. Tuesday’s TV debate was truly ghastly. Rishi Sunak deployed the Brexit leaver’s tactic of twisting statistics. Keir Starmer’s pitch amounted to little more than a new feeder for the Downing Street cat.

The floating voter aches to hear something new, especially from an opposition that has been out of power for more than a decade. Radicalism was once in Labour’s DNA. Starmer might choke on the word socialism, but he leads the party of Keir Hardie, Herbert Morrison and Nye Bevan. His precursors gave us the health service and nationalisation, public corporations and town planning. Even the crypto-Tory Tony Blair brought in devolution and elected mayors.

Where is such radicalism now? The public’s view is that the Tory handling of the nation’s economy, and particularly its public sector, has gone seriously awry. Services seem everywhere in a shambles. Labour demands change, but appears uncertain of its direction and guiding ideology. There is a terror of saying where the........

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