Is Starmer’s lack of ambition holding Labour back?

The battle of the New Year launch speeches enters its second day, with Labour leader Keir Starmer giving his own address in East London. Rishi Sunak said yesterday he had five ‘immediate priorities’ for fixing Britain. The Labour leader is offering a similar repair job this morning, while also trying to reassure voters this won’t involve his party spending vast sums of money. Starmer will say that, while his party will ‘give people a sense of possibility again’, this is not ‘code for Labour getting its big government chequebook out again’.

Starmer and his shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves have made a virtue out of refusing shadow cabinet requests for spending commitments over the past few months to enable the leader to make this kind of promise. The Labour leader has spent that same period trying to challenge his party’s own sacred cows on Brexit and other issues, and today he will say that government is ‘no substitute for a robust private sector, creating wealth in every community’.