Can Keir Starmer get Labour back on track?

The Labour leader must urgently change the narrative which is in danger of being set in stone – that he is not up to the massive task ahead. But that isn’t an impossible job, writes Andrew Grice

Making a fist of it: Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer outside his north London home on Monday (PA)

After his bruising first encounter with the voters and a botched first reshuffle, there are growing doubts inside Labour that Keir Starmer can turn the party’s prospects around.

With all eyes on him, Sir Keir needs to put in a strong performance in the Commons on Tuesday when he responds to the Queen’s Speech. In fact, Sir Keir has done well in his recent weekly jousts with Boris Johnson at Prime Minister’s Questions. The big test for the former director of public prosecutions is not persuading the Commons judges, but the jury of public opinion.

Sir Keir needs to explain urgently what he and his party stand for, so he will launch a policy review. But when the-then Labour leader Neil Kinnock did that in the 1980s, it took two years. Sir Keir doesn’t have that much time.

He doesn’t need an A-Z policy compendium but a few coherent symbolic policies impacting on people’s lives to show them how Labour would do things differently. The insecure world of work will rightly be a priority. If Mr Johnson steals Labour’s ideas, as he is liable to, Labour will have to find some more. The party needs to move outside its comfort zone and devise policies for homeowners as well as renters, for car drivers as well as those who depend on public transport, and for small business owners as well as trade unionists.

Allies of Sir Keir were critical of Jeremy Corbyn’s political management but the past few days suggest history is repeating itself.  The Labour leader has found it much harder to unite his fractious party than he imagined when he took over 13 months ago. The faction-fighting of the Corbyn years was suppressed briefly but is now out in the open again. Sir Keir’s skills will be tested in the way he manages his relationship with his deputy, Angela Rayner, who might push the boundaries of her new shadow cabinet brief after their arm-wrestling over her role.

Sir Keir will need to lead from the front. To be noticed by the public, he will have to define himself against his party – as Tony Blair did. The hard left is bitterly disappointed at Sir Keir’s performance, and expects him to ditch the Corbyn prospectus they thought he offered during the party leadership election. While some rows with the Corbyn left would do Sir Keir no harm in the red-turned-blue wall, he will need to keep the soft left on board to avoid finding himself isolated.

The Labour leader must urgently change the narrative which is in danger of being set in stone – that he is not up to the massive task ahead. The Tory-dominated newspapers will do their best to fuel this narrative. It can be hard for an opposition leader to change perceptions once voters make an initial judgment on them, as William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith discovered.

However, there are some grounds for hope; until Mr Johnson got his “vaccine boost,” Labour was neck and neck in the polls and Sir Keir was viewed as the best prime minister. He passed the “can you imagine this man in Downing Street?” test in a way Mr Corbyn never did.

Mr Blair’s aides used to say that he showed “balls of steel” as opposition leader. Sir Keir will now need to display more courage than he has done so far; fence-sitting and messy compromises will not be enough. He does have the hunger and determination to win power he will need for the daunting challenge ahead. The question that worries him is whether his party does.