Keir Starmer: ‘We haven’t won – yet’

When Keir Starmer won the Labour leadership in 2020, following the party’s worst election defeat since 1935, many people shook him by the hand, said ‘good luck’ and then added darkly ‘you’re not going to do it in five years’. Just three years later, he has done ‘it’, to the extent that Labour is 20 points ahead in the polls. The insult the Tories levelled at him when he became opposition leader – that he was boring – now looks like an advantage when it is offset by Conservative psycho-drama. Starmer clearly thinks things are going his way.

Actually, things aren’t going his way when we meet, because his train is delayed. He is trying to go to Slough to campaign, but all the trains out of Paddington are either running behind or cancelled. It’s not a strike day, which helps the Labour attack line that Britain is falling apart because of the Conservative government, not strikes.