Starmer is moving on to the attack – and it spells danger for the Tories

There will be plenty of opportunities ahead for the Labour leader to make life difficult for the PM

Since the start of the pandemic, Boris Johnson has encountered almost no political opposition to his Covid plans. He’s had a few angry backbenchers, with some Cabinet members moaning about being kept in the dark, but no parliamentary drama. In times of national crisis, Opposition parties tend to back the government and Labour has dutifully done so, in every major vote. The Prime Minister had been telling friends that he didn’t even have to think about Sir Keir Starmer’s arguments about his handling of the pandemic as they never amount to anything. But now, that’s starting to change.

Take the recent skirmish over the 10pm curfew. For once, Starmer asked to see the evidence behind the policy he was being asked to vote for. As he knew, there wasn’t any: closing the pubs early was a No 10 idea intended, primarily, to send a message. It was the latest in a fairly long line of evidence-free policies and Starmer wanted to expose this point. He let the drama run for a day or so, before deciding to drop his objections. It was a warning shot.

Labour’s dossier on local lockdowns was far more potent. It looked at 20 areas that have spent two months under various restrictions and pointed to how the virus had surged in 19 of them.

In Bolton, Hyndburn and Bury, Covid infections have risen more than tenfold. In Burnley, they have risen twentyfold. All of these towns were once held by Labour, but recently turned Conservative. Some see, in all of this, a longer-term strategy: to tell northern voters that they’re being used as a laboratory for failed Tory experiments.

For his part, Starmer makes no such partisan argument – at least, not explicitly. His shift is subtle, but significant: he’s moving to what he calls “constructive opposition”. His new rules of engagement are as follows: he’ll keep supporting No 10 in the very big decisions. He tells colleagues that they can’t complain about a confusing message if they’re contributing to the confusion. But he will criticise ministers for incompetence, ask for a strategy, demand to see evidence behind it – and if there isn’t any, then he’ll let the world know. On certain smaller issues, he may vote with Tory rebels to defeat the Government. Just to show that he can.

His style is to move slowly (to his Labour critics, agonisingly so) with every move a signal of another to come. He could make life a lot harder for the Tories if he were to start listing the side-effects of lockdown, and arguing that not enough is being done for the victims. A study from the Education Endowment Foundation estimates that school closures were so damaging as to have set the attainment gap between rich and poor back 10 years. This is classic Labour territory, albeit made harder by the fact that Starmer backed school closures.

Then there’s cancer. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, has astonished colleagues by his lack of interest in non-covid health problems – a few days ago, he said that even cancer care would be conditional on having the virus under control.

After months of near-silence, Labour is now starting to shine a spotlight on this. Cancer treatments starting after screening fell by two-thirds in July, it says, with only a quarter of those who needed treatment actually receiving it on time. A recent study calculated all this could mean up to 36,000 extra cancer deaths – something that ought to be a fairly decent subject for Labour to campaign on.

The coming job losses are expected to hit the lower-paid hardest, with pain concentrated on the young. Then come the effects of quantitative easing, as the Bank of England finances what is currently the biggest government deficit in the world. We can expect all this money-printing to send asset prices surging, to the advantage of the richest while the poorest see their earning power quashed. Just as we saw after the last crash. Again, all perfect ammunition for a semi-functioning Labour Party.

Just a few months ago, there seemed to be no risk of Labour coming back to life. Starmer seemed doomed to endless battles with the Corbynites, with no time to focus on government. He had nothing memorable to say as we went into lockdown, or when we came out. But some Tories are now starting to worry that he is cutting a more convincing figure. George Osborne recently told me that Starmer looks as though he could walk into No 10 immediately. It has been a very long time, he said, since the Tories have been up against such a plausible opponent.

But it’s also a very long time until the next general election, and Starmer is still struggling. His strategy – to question, but not oppose – has left him embarrassingly unable to say what he’d do differently. But even posing questions will have force – especially when the leaders of Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle city councils (all Labour-run) are putting up more resistance to the Government. Tory backbenchers are itching for a rebellion and had hoped Starmer would join them in voting to end the Government’s emergency powers last week. The message came back: an interesting idea, but not yet.

After months of emergency powers, ministers have almost forgotten how to make the case for their various Covid plans and have become a little quick to accuse critics of being happy to “let the virus rip”. The word “libertarian” has been applied to Tories who question the logic behind new restrictions, but it will be hard to apply this word to the Labour mayors and council leaders worried about the future of their communities.

The next few days – and weeks – will show how bad the new Covid wave will be. Ministers, once again, are prepared for the worst. Back in March, the case for was simple: Lombardy was being overwhelmed, so the same would happen here without lockdown. But last time, there was no time to think about the side effects of restrictions. This time, there’s more of an argument – in Westminster, and in the town halls

– so it will look something closer to normal political debate, with ministers having to do far more to explain themselves. Given what’s at stake, it’s long overdue.