Unopposed: why is Keir Starmer making life so easy for the PM?

If there is one thing worse than being talked about, it is not being talked about — and this is the fate beginning to befall Keir Starmer. He is at risk of becoming an irrelevance.

After not even a year of being Labour leader, Starmer finds his personal ratings on the slide: a YouGov poll this week showed his rating at minus 13, down from plus 22 last summer. Just over half of voters think he doesn’t look like a PM-in-waiting and Labour itself is consistently trailing the Tories in the polls. It’s not clear yet what Starmer stands for, and he is running out of time to make an impression on the public. There is some nervousness about the upcoming Hartlepool by-election despite the fact Hartlepool has never elected a Tory. This is telling. Opposition parties aren’t meant to be concerned about holding seats in a by-election a year into a parliament.

To be fair, Starmer took the job on in very difficult circumstances. Not only had Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership done huge damage to the party, but Starmer was elected leader just as the first wave of Covid was hitting Britain. His leadership acceptance speech and his party conference address were both delivered to teleprompters in empty rooms. But the bigger problem for him has been that voters have simply not viewed the virus as political, which is why Starmer has decided to suspend normal political combat and has recently been praising the vaccine rollout.

It’s disorientating for voters. For strategic — perhaps even patriotic — reasons, Starmer is choosing not to oppose: in some ways, he’s becoming something of a help to the Prime Minister. Trouble getting lockdown past Tory rebels? Don’t worry, Labour will lend its votes.

Perhaps the most striking example of the Starmer-Johnson double act will come in next week’s vote on whether lockdown powers should be extended for another three months and the emergency powers of the Coronavirus Act for another six.