Can Labour capture the spirit of the post-war era?

The right is usually much better than the left at harnessing the awesome power of the folk memories that surround Britain’s heroic second world war struggle.

The idea of British exceptionalism at its most evocative moment between 1939 and 1945 was crucial to Brexit and crucial to securing popular backing for the Falklands War a generation earlier too.

So for Keir Starmer to base his economic pitch for power not on modern monetary theory or any other piece of leftish guru-jargon, but instead on drawing parallels with the reforming post-war Labour administration of Clement Attlee is smart politics.

The Attlee government has a powerful mythology of its own that adds up to Labour’s best patriotic story, as Starmer set out on Thursday.

The plot runs as follows: people unite in a great national effort against a prevailing evil and after triumphing over it, assisted by the coordinating power of the state, resolve that the spirit of togetherness must be sustained via a more socialist approach.