Keir Starmer must take his own advice and turn his party’s focus outwards

Editorial: Labour’s conference is its showcase to the nation – and it has opened with an internal debate and a defeat for the leader

Sir Keir Starmer arrives at the Labour conference in Brighton with Anneliese Dodds, left, and Angela Rayner (Reuters)

Sir Keir Starmer told his shadow cabinet a few days ago that he wanted to change the Labour Party rules because the current ones “focus us inwards to spend too much time talking to and about ourselves”. His proposals succeeded in turning the party inwards so that its members spent the days before their annual conference talking to and about themselves.

That might have been a price worth paying if the changes had been plainly necessary, and if the party had responded to a show of leadership. But the case for the proposed changes is marginal at best. Fixing the rules to make it harder for “another Jeremy Corbyn” to win the leadership betrays a lack of confidence in the ability of the social-democratic wing of the party to win the argument.

It also seems curious to be focused on what happens after Sir Keir has ceased to be leader rather than on what it would take to make him prime minister. That is surely the direction in which the energies of the Labour Conference should be directed. The nation faces a difficult period, with the government making many of the wrong choices, and the opposition ought to be hammering home a few simple arguments again and again.