Voters still don’t know what Keir Starmer stands for

Keir Starmer is frustrated. He wants to talk about the future but interviewers like me will insist on asking him about the past. ‘I can’t believe I’m still talking about my parents when I’m over 60,’ the Labour leader has been heard to complain to his advisers. In my BBC Panorama interview with him, I asked him about his mother’s words on her death bed: ‘You won’t let your dad go private, will you?’ I felt that plea – which he revealed to me in a previous interview – told a great deal about Starmer’s ideological roots. So too does his passionate belief in comprehensive schools. Unlike plenty of senior Labour figures – Diane Abbott, to name but one – he wouldn’t let his kids go to a selective school, let alone go private. He appears to relish the argument about putting VAT on school fees for the few, as it allows him to be seen to stand up for the many – the 93 per cent – who use state schools. The Tories have attempted to portray Sir Keir as a leftie north London lawyer. More important, I think, is that he will lead the most proudly working-class cabinet in decades.

Starmer’s advisers are more frustrated by questions about their man’s more recent history. Why waste time indulging in Starmer rhetorical archaeology, they ask. Simple. Our viewers tell us they still don’t know what the man who is odds on to be our next prime minister really stands for. They know he wants to be seen as the heir to Blair. He grins when I show him matching photos of the two leaders in their election uniforms – crisp white shirt with rolled-up sleeves. He’s much less keen to look at the next photo I call up, in which he’s seen warmly congratulating Jeremy Corbyn – the man, he said, would make a great prime minister.