Is 2023 the year Starmer throws caution to the wind?

With Labour twenty points ahead of the Conservatives and leading in most policy areas – including, crucially, the ability to best manage the economy – the next election seems to be Keir Starmer’s to lose. Divided and distraught Conservative MPs appear to have accepted their fate. Indeed, some supporters of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss relish the prospect of opposition so they can properly settle accounts with their enemies.

Yet Rishi Sunak still has a slim hope of retaining power, should the economy start to right itself by 2024 and if he can convince voters a Labour government would ruin any observable recovery. This requires him to attack Labour’s bona fides and especially those of its leader.

In the run-up to the next election Conservatives will do their best to argue that Starmer cannot be trusted. They will cast him as a woke elitist in hock to militant union barons, the Remainer who thought Jeremy Corbyn should be Prime Minister and wanted to betray the Brexit vote.