New year, new Keir: how the Labour leader will change tack in 2021

Sir Keir Starmer will start setting out his vision for the Labour party in the new year, Coffee House understands. The Labour leader will ‘move onto another level’, according to party sources, talking about what life under a Starmer government might look like, and encouraging his frontbenchers to make policy announcements.

Up to this point, Starmer has had a strangely slow start as leader because he has been largely in reactive mode, responding to the government’s own response to the pandemic. This has made it easier for him to avoid awkward confrontations in his party over policy, with the stand-off over anti-Semitism being the only real ruction. He has focused largely on appearing competent and trying to prevent his opponents from defining him early, as happened with Ed Miliband. But there is a recognition in the Leader of the Opposition’s team that in 2021 he will need to move to a new phase which starts to show what he and the Labour party now stand for.