Keir Starmer is looking increasingly prime ministerial – the others must step up if they're to stand a chance

Along with Nandy, he was the candidate who caught the eye most in the two TV debates, writes Andrew Grice

Sir Keir Starmer’s campaign has been reported to the Information Commissioner (Getty)

When Labour’s leadership election began, Lisa Nandy phoned Keir Starmer to say the rival candidates should “look after each other” at their hustings around the country because such contests can get “really brutal”.

The four contenders all declared they were “friends” at the close of a 90-minute debate on BBC2’s Victoria Derbyshire programme today. Although those of us in the media would naturally prefer blood on the studio floor, there were some small but important differences between the friends and rivals during the show and the first televised debate on the BBC’s Newsnight last night.

Lisa Nandy used both well to display her unique selling point: she has not been in the shadow cabinet for the last three years, and so can escape responsibility for Labour’s disastrous election result. She pointedly accused her three rivals of not “standing up and speaking out” on the party’s failure to tackle antisemitism. She said she did so before leaving the shadow cabinet in 2016 after, she claimed, Jeremy Corbyn’s team made clear it would wage “factional war” until its opponents had been crushed. Emily Thornberry outlined a similar experience with Corbyn’s office, saying she was told to keep out of the antisemitism controversy. Not a good look for Team Corbyn.

Starmer and Thornberry insisted they did speak up on antisemitism, but Thornberry made waves last night by saying she did not remember Rebecca Long-Bailey doing so, even though Long-Bailey insists she did.

Nandy expressed her frustration with the contest so far. “The challenges we face are so big and yet the debate we are having is so small,” the Wigan MP said. She has a point: to date, the common ground between the candidates vastly exceeds their differences.

On a show of hands on Newsnight, all four backed the abolition of university tuition fees (even though Nandy earlier said the party did not have a clue how to pay for it when they made it an election promise), and renationalising the water and electricity industries. None wanted to abolish private schools, keep the pension age at 66, or bring in a four-day working week.

Along with Nandy, the candidate who caught the eye most in the two TV debates was Starmer. Yes, he showed the natural caution of the frontrunner. Hugging his rivals close on policy suits his strategy well. But he did pass the “Can you imagine this person as prime minister?” test, which, it seems, is all-important for many of Labour’s 500,000 members. The party's shattering defeat in December appears to have tipped the scales in Starmer’s favour. If Corbyn had run the Tories closer, I suspect Long-Bailey would be doing the same to Starmer now, and might even be ahead.

The latest nominations from constituency parties show Starmer in a very strong position. Starmer has 338, Long-Bailey 148, Nandy 64 and Thornberry 27 (six short of the threshold she needs to clear by Friday’s deadline to make the final shortlist). Significantly, Starmer is ahead of Long-Bailey even among local parties who backed Corbyn in 2016, when he was challenged for his job by Pontypridd MP Owen Smith.

MPs tell me that in some local meetings now taking place, Long-Bailey tops the poll on the first round, but is then overtaken by Starmer under the preferential voting system. This should be replicated in the actual ballot held between 24 February and 2 April. However, Long-Bailey supporters argue that only about one in 10 members attends the nomination meetings, so she has plenty of scope to catch Starmer in the all-member ballot.

It looks as if we are heading for a Starmer-Rayner leadership team. Angela Rayner has 272 nominations for deputy leader, Dawn Butler 63, Richard Burgon 57, Ian Murray 47 and Rosena Allin-Khan 42. Although Long-Bailey is running on a joint ticket with her friend and flatmate Rayner, two in five constituency parties have nominated Starmer and Rayner.

While no candidate, Starmer included, is calling openly for Corbynism to be buried, many members appear to take the view that the experiment has been tried and failed. They want to retain the values that underpinned Corbynism but, after four election defeats, want a leader who will give them a shot at regaining power. As Starmer argued powerfully: “There is a price when you lose an election, which is why we have got to win the next one.” His trump card is that many Labour members see him as the person to do that.