Vacuous muddle that shows he’s no idea what he’d do as PM

Keir Starmer began his big speech sounding like a Dalek. Then the volume went completely. Then things got worse. it had been billed as the address that would herald ‘ a decade of national renewal’. But when the volume was restored all we got was a chaotic jumble of abstract, inchoate gobbledygook.

There was something about england’s cricketers. There was a line about giving nurses better pay. There was a passage about ‘change’. Not just any old change but ‘real change, lasting change’.

Then finally we got the big reveal. Labour will introduce a ‘take back control’ Bill.

That’s it. Genuinely. Keir Starmer’s grand idea.

industrial mayhem. Chaos at the borders. The implosion of the NHS. The worst cost of living crisis in memory. Putin rampaging across the continent.

Sir Keir’s solution will be to introduce a ‘take back control’ Bill. What will be in it? Labour’s leader didn’t say. What would it do? Silence. How would it be paid for? A bigger silence.

On Wednesday rishi Sunak gave a speech that was initially framed by his commitment to ensure all pupils study maths to the age of 18. it was – rightly – derided as being disconnected from the priorities of the moment.

But when he stood up, what the Prime Minister actually delivered was solid and sound. A pledge to halve inflation. A pledge to restore growth. A pledge to reduce the national debt. A pledge to cut NHS waiting lists. A pledge to stop illegal immigration by small boats.

Some of Sunak’s critics derided it as an undeliverable wish list. Others said his promises were so unambitious as to be meaningless. either or both criticisms may ultimately prove valid. But at least rishi Sunak has provided a clear benchmark against which his premiership can now be judged.

Keir Starmer did the opposite. He derided Westminster’s habit of identifying problems, then failing to provide solutions. Then he proceeded to do precisely that.

The strikes had to end, he said. So would he support minimum service agreements? No. Would he say what level of pay he would offer to settle the disputes? No.

‘You can’t legislate your way out of 13 years of failure,’ Labour’s leader proclaimed. Having announced five minutes before that he would reverse a decade of Conservative neglect via his magic ‘take back control’ Bill.

Last year ended with Labour on a high. The Tories were running through a leader a week. Their poll rating was in freefall. Britain was fed up to the back teeth with the Government’s incompetence and infighting.

So yesterday Keir Starmer had one job. To demonstrate that he and his party are now ready to take the step from being an effective opposition to being an effective government.

He failed. Yesterday, Labour mocked rishi Sunak’s speech for delivering ‘double maths’. But what Starmer was promising the nation was essentially ‘treble-Miliband’.

if you’d closed your eyes it was like Labour’s lost leader was back. The word ‘green’ was inserted into every other sentence, as if it had the power to defy the immutable laws of politics and economics.

But when Starmer was brought back into sharp contact with the real world, all he could do was dodge and deflect. ‘None of this should be code for Labour getting out its big government chequebook again,’ he intoned.

SO did that mean Labour was prepared to commit to sign up to Tory spending limits? ‘We need to be absolutely clear that we can’t spend our way out of the mess the country is in,’ he replied. Without being clear what this actually meant in practice.

Starmer’s allies keep insisting he views complacency as his biggest enemy. They promise that he is not planning simply to sit back and let the Tories win the next election for him.

But that was exactly what it looked like yesterday. His speech was utterly – and deliberately – devoid of commitments or content. it was a vacuous address from a man who clearly thinks the next election is in the bag.

And he may be right. The country may well have had quite enough Tory psychodrama and mismanagement.

But if it has, Britain deserves better than this. Keir Starmer may indeed be on the brink of power. But on yesterday’s showing he hasn’t got the first clue what he intends to do with it.