Keir Starmer’s plan of attack against Liz Truss

The Labour leader has a three-point plan for taking on the new incumbent of No 10, writes John Rentoul

Keir Starmer will attempt to portray Liz Truss as more of the same brand of politics (PA)

It may be tasteless to say so, but the energy crisis is the best thing that could have happened to Labour’s chances at the next election. With the departure of Boris Johnson, much of Keir Starmer’s pitch to the country was about to disappear.

Starmer presented himself as a leader of integrity, the alternative to Johnson’s rule-breaking slipperiness, with a bit of dull competence thrown in as a contrast to his opponent’s entertaining act of not being quite across the detail. Despite attempts to portray Liz Truss as the “continuity Johnson” candidate, most of those advantages have gone.

There appear to be three prongs to Starmer’s plan of attack on the new prime minister. They are all things he would have done anyway if Johnson had survived, but the new situation brings them into sharper focus.

The first is policy. Labour’s plan to freeze energy prices for six months, agreed between Starmer and Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, when the Labour leader was on holiday in Mallorca last month, opened up a clear divide between government and opposition.

It would be hugely expensive, and the way it is “paid for” doesn’t really add up, depending on tricks such as assuming a saving on debt interest payments from the lower inflation rate and backdating the notional revenue from the windfall tax on oil and gas companies to when Labour first called for it in January. Furthermore, a lot of the benefit would go to the better-off, who tend to use more energy, but the policy is simple and very popular.

That is why it looks as if Truss, having held back during the leadership campaign, will adopt most of Labour’s proposals and indeed go further. Until a few days before her appointment as prime minister, Truss appeared to rule out the essential elements of Labour’s plan. She said she didn’t agree with giving taxpayer help to people who don’t need it, and she opposed any increase in the windfall tax beyond the amount announced by Rishi Sunak in May.

However, just as Johnson and Sunak copied Labour’s policy of imposing the windfall tax in the first place (which in turn was first proposed by the Liberal Democrats), Truss is now poised to announce a huge subsidy to keep gas and electricity prices fixed at current levels. She still resists imposing any further windfall tax on oil and gas producers and has dramatised her commitment with her “no new taxes” pledge in the final hustings. This implies that her plan will be paid for entirely by extra borrowing.

This is a battle that Starmer will be happy to fight. Whatever Truss does, he can always promise to do more, and he can always claim that it will be funded by a bigger windfall tax. He can quote Sunak last week in his support: “It is absolutely the right thing at a time when energy companies are making millions of pounds of profits because of a war – that is not right, and we should exceptionally tax those and help with those people’s bills.”

Not only that, but Starmer and Reeves, up against Truss, also have corporation tax up their sleeves. Truss has promised to cancel next year’s planned rise in corporation tax, which was going to raise substantial sums needed to restore the public finances to sustainability by the end of this parliament. The energy crisis means that those revenues have probably disappeared into the maw of recession, but as the parties gear up for the next election, Labour could pay for costed spending promises in the future by corporation tax rises. The voters will approve of them, on the principle of “don’t tax you, don’t tax me, tax that man behind the tree”, and Truss won’t be able to match them.

The second prong of Starmer’s assault on the new prime minister is his presentational makeover. He has been working on his TV manner, and suddenly came across as more relaxed and natural in a Labour video setting out his energy plan, and on the Jeremy Vine on 5 show, last week. After two and a half years of seeming pinched and stiff against Johnson, a boisterously confident TV performer, Starmer may now be flattered by the comparison with Truss, who can sometimes seem awkward and uncertain.

The third prong of attack is the attempt to drive home the claim that Truss is more of the same, rather than a change from Johnson. She started her leadership campaign claiming to be the change candidate and ended it by pitching shamelessly to the Boris fan club. One of the tests of her premiership will be how much she will disown him once in office.

In that respect, the contest between Truss and Starmer in the run-up to the next election will be between one candidate who told their members what they wanted to hear and another, and may be won by whoever can more ruthlessly cast aside the promises that got them elected leader.

Starmer’s betrayal of the Corbynite platform on which he was elected at one point threatened to destabilise his leadership, as both wings of the party scratched their heads and wondered whether he believed in anything at all. Earlier this year, he seemed to encourage speculation about who might succeed him by promising to stand down if he was fined by the police for breaking coronavirus law.

That pledge was a worthwhile risk against Johnson, the law-breaking prime minister, but it is useless now. All it did was encourage his own party to wonder whether, if the Tories were changing their leader, they should follow suit. Not that any of the alternatives is so compelling that Starmer needed to worry unduly: Lisa Nandy, Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham, who failed to rule out another run at the leadership for about the 94th time last week.

But now, with the scale of the energy crisis threatening to overwhelm the new government, Starmer looks more secure than ever. It is remarkable what the prospect of winning the next election can do for a party’s discipline, and for a leader’s confidence.