The Tories want to portray Keir Starmer as unpatriotic and soft on crime – he must come out fighting

The Labour Party shouldn’t shy away from a debate about values and leave the battlefield clear for the Tories, writes Andrew Grice

Starmer can’t avoid Tory traps forever (Getty)

What did this week’s government proposals to send asylum seekers abroad, increase the UK’s stockpile of Trident nuclear weapons and reform policing laws have in common? They were all designed, at least in part, to put Labour on the wrong side of a dividing line in the eyes of voters, particularly in the red wall.

Any government has the power to set the agenda and Boris Johnson is using it ruthlessly and shamelessly to try to portray Keir Starmer and his party as unpatriotic and soft on crime, asylum and defence. It’s not true, but it might work.

So it gives Starmer a huge dilemma, when it is already hard for Labour to make headway during a national emergency. “This is a difficult time for us, and the Tories are trying to make it even more difficult,” one Labour frontbencher admitted.