Get ready for Starmer’s Brexit conversion

A new problem is looming for Sir Keir Starmer: a leader of the opposition needs some shop windows if he is to get more punters through the doors and his will shortly be getting boarded up.

Prime Minister’s Questions is usually more important to opposition leaders than it is to the actual PM because he must demonstrate that he has the potential to upend the status quo, increasing market share at the expense of the dominant player.

By a quirk of parliament’s amended coronavirus calendar, Sir Keir Starmer still has four PMQs outings in which to strut his stuff before the later than usual summer recess. Yet, methodical and measured though his performances have been, it is fair to say that no trees have been uprooted and the lack of atmosphere in a four-fifths empty chamber is starting to take its toll.

By July, an opposition leader will usually be contemplating his biggest shop window of the year – the party conference and his own keynote speech at it.