Does anyone know what Keir Starmer is thinking?

Even at the best of times, Keir Starmer has remained tantalisingly out of reach for those who crave simple definitions. Before the election, he consistently defied demands to set out a big vision or draw straight dividing lines. He’s always more comfortable with ambiguity and complexity. As he liked to say during the final days of the campaign, ‘There’s always a “but” with me somewhere.’

Now, of course, he really isn’t having the best of times. All those ‘buts’ are piling up. The ill-disciplined briefing battle within his team appeared to elevate office politics above real politics. The Treasury decision to means-test pensioners’ winter fuel allowances was inept. Most damaging of all were the expensive freebies which smouldered on for almost a month.

Few people in Westminster can possibly believe Starmer came into politics so that he could get some free suits and go to a couple of Taylor Swift shows, as has sometimes been implied by sections of a media hell-bent on finding false equivalence with the last government. But aides privately suggest that the Prime Minister suffers from an unworldly reluctance to realise how such stories undermine his reputation.

Some of those who work for Starmer have always been puzzled by the way he doesn’t quite fit the template for a political leader. He seems to lack the core skills and instincts needed to succeed as one. Too often since the election, he’s been strangely absent from their accounts of Labour’s victory – almost as if he was someone who didn’t even get to choose what clothes he wore or where his government goes from here.

The usual answer to questions about the direction Starmer would take once in power is to point to his ‘five missions’ – economic growth, safer streets, clean energy, breaking barriers to opportunity and getting the NHS fit for the future – that he began setting out from the start of last year.