Was Labour conference a success for Starmer?

There is relief in the opposition leader’s office this morning following a broadly warm reception to Keir Starmer’s speech at Labour conference. An Opinium poll found that when chunks of the speech were surveyed on a group of 1,330 people, 63 per cent agreed with what he had to say and 62 per cent said he was competent. The front pages, too, are encouraging for Starmer with the papers focussing in on his effort to separate himself from Corbynism and learn from the Blair years. The Mirror has hailed it as one step ‘closer to power’, the Times says he made a ‘reasonable fist’ of it while the Sun has blasted Starmer over how long it went on for.

Given Starmer’s team hoped conference would mark a ‘turning the page’ moment, the bulk of the response is where they would like the focus to be.