Careful, Keir: things can only get better... until you’re in office

Keir Starmer has done a good job of lowering expectations and avoiding Labour’s historic destiny of messing things up. But he’s also said he needs ‘10 years in power’ – and the last person with his eye on a decade in Downing Street was Boris Johnson, writes John Rentoul

The success of Rachel Reeves’s conference speech poses a problem for Keir Starmer (PA)

It is hard to see what could have gone more right for Keir Starmer. By a quirk of bookings, the Labour conference has gone the week after the Conservatives instead of its usual slot the week before.

The prime minister obliged by managing his conference so badly that it was dominated by the decision to cut the high-speed rail link to the venue. The main excitement on the fringes of the Tory conference was generated by Liz Truss, a leader so disastrous that she set a new record for brevity of prime ministerial tenure, and Nigel Farage, the bane of the party for so long.

The scene thus set, Labour managed to avoid its historic destiny of making a mess of things. Although the tech broke down, which meant that the surprise video of Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, endorsing Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, had to be shown after her speech, rather than before. But not even that glitch could detract from the thrill of the coup.