After a year of delivering speeches in empty rooms, the Labour leader must offer true opposition, while the PM must face his divided party
Keir Starmer has spent most of his first year as Labour leader giving speeches to empty rooms. He has had to gauge whether his leadership is transforming the party or falling flat using different methods than usual: there is no crowd offering him standing ovations, barely any action on the doorstep with real voters and not even the regular party meetings where MPs get to sound off about, or show their approval of, their leaders.
An argument has been gaining currency in the party that Starmer’s pitch is as empty as the rooms where he records his video messages and sometimes takes PMQs. It’s a view shared by many Conservative MPs, who very rarely raise the threat posed by the Labour party when they shoot the breeze about the state of the political scene. This is largely because they do not perceive that there is a threat and feel it is unlikely things will change, even when Starmer is able to break out of his empty rooms.
