Starmer risks a backlash with his Thatcher praise

Two Telegraph stories in successive days illustrate Labour’s dilemma. Today the paper gives a favourable write-up to the party’s Australian-style scheme for AI to analyse hospital scans. It comes after the Sunday edition yesterday splashed Keir Starmer’s praise for Margaret Thatcher – a tactic they have previously deployed in the same paper to great success. Alongside warm words for Tony Blair and Clement Attlee, Starmer wrote that the Tory premier effected ‘meaningful change’ in the UK as she ‘sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism.’

Both stories are positive for Labour, making use of the opposition’s relatively-few tools to try to dominate the news agenda. The key difference between the two though is the sums involved. Streeting’s vision costs money – £1 billion according to former health minister Neil O’Brien. But Starmer’s praise for Thatcher was a fiscally-free way of appealing for Tory votes, at a time when ‘there is no money left’.