With a seven-point poll lead and a bolstered shadow cabinet, the Labour leader is finally making his mark
If champagne socialism did not have such a bad rap, there should be a decent bottle or two open at Keir Starmer’s place this new year weekend. The party has its first consistent lead over the Conservatives: a seven-point advantage of the kind it requires to turn Labour’s doldrums into territory where it could conceivably claw back an election win from the long-running disaster movie. (The opposition was last in power when Eminem was topping the chart.)
To his credit, Starmer has held his nerve in a gruelling house clean after the Corbyn era. Yes, there are still strong far left redoubts in Young Labour and the trade union movement, but the leadership has in essence won a battle to rebalance key roles. Indeed, a revivified Team Keir looks like a centrist revival. Rachel Reeves is an assiduous shadow chancellor who can test Rishi Sunak’s pain threshold this year as concerns over cost of living and failings by the government to offset energy price hikes deepen economic anxieties.
