Keir Starmer is sleepwalking towards victory – let’s hope his rising stars can shine

Labour may not have workable policies but at least it would have some capable ministers – wouldn’t it, asks John Rentoul

Labour is going to need talented shadow ministers such as Wes Streeting (left) and Peter Kyle to fulfil their promise (PA)

After the smoke cleared on yesterday’s opening exchanges in the long election campaign, the shape of The Problem emerged. The Problem is that Keir Starmer is stumbling towards an election victory for which he is unprepared.

He protested in an interview this morning that he had set out “five big speeches, five massive missions” a year ago. “We’ve put the detail out, backing papers and all the rest of it”, he said, and still people say that they don’t know what he stands for.

Yet he knows perfectly well that what people mean is that they don’t think he is likely to achieve his “five massive missions”. Most people have not read the thousands of words of National Policy Forum documents and what Starmer calls “backing papers” but they sense that important ingredients such as specifics, funding and credible mechanisms are missing.

Anyone who has read Labour policy documents knows that they are a lot like Starmer’s speech yesterday: a lot of words about hope expressed in the leaden prose of platitude. They tend to set out hugely ambitious targets without any visible means of support.

One reason for this is that they have been stripped of spending promises in a ruthless red-pen operation run by Rachel Reeves’s shadow Treasury team. But The Problem is worse than that.

The first “mission” is to achieve higher economic growth. As it has been since Tony Crosland’s time and before, this has long been the key to unlocking the cornucopia of the benefits of social democracy. But which key to try in the lock? Liz Truss tried unfunded tax cuts. There are better options that a Labour government could try.

Planning reform is one, but governments have been trying to reform the planning system ever since the Town and Country Planning Act of 1947, and it is not easy. Even if it could be done and Labour could hit its target of 1.5 million new homes in five years, it wouldn’t make much difference to growth in the short term.

The obvious magic key might be to rejoin the EU single market, which might be an ambition after a third election win but isn’t going to be deployed soon.

Which is why Starmer relies so heavily on green pie in the sky, and the implausible claim that the transition to clean power will cut energy bills within five years. If true, it could promote growth – but sadly it is not true, and Labour’s plan to decarbonise UK electricity generation by 2030 is one example where the “detail” and “backing papers” are inadequate.

So far, however, the Conservative attack on Labour’s plan has been ineffective. For all Labour’s pre-emptive warnings about the Tories’ “Project Fear” and the “most negative campaign ever” (© all parties at every general election), the Tory assault on the “£28bn” has so far caused Labour’s lead to slump from 17 percentage points before Christmas to … 17 points in the new year.

If Tory HQ keeps this up, Starmer will be installed in No 10 with a bigger majority than Tony Blair, charged with delivering an unexamined programme that is patently undeliverable.

Maybe the voters will be indulgent, relieved to see new faces in charge, full of enthusiasm and good intentions. Maybe the voters will forgive Labour its rhetorical overreach, and be happy that at least the new government says it cares about growth, climate change and violence against women and girls, even if it has no idea how to achieve the targets it has set itself.

But that does depend on Labour ministers being up to the job. This is an increasingly pressing topic of conversation in Westminster. Starmer rarely mentions the team around him – in his Bristol speech and the questions afterwards, he didn’t mention a single other member of his shadow cabinet – but they are going to be critical to ensuring a new government doesn’t crash straight away.

Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, is a strong politician – but beyond her, who will be the mainstays of a Labour government? This will be a big test of the “dynamic duo” of Wes Streeting and Peter Kyle. The shadow health secretary and shadow science secretary share an office in Portcullis House, the parliamentary annexe opposite Big Ben. More importantly, they share an outlook that is modern and creative, and they are both good communicators. In their constant jokey but serious back-and-forth, they are the inheritors of the partnership traditions of Blair and Brown and of Cameron and Osborne.

Streeting, with his streetwise skills, has managed to harass successive health secretaries over NHS strikes without becoming the patsy of the trade unions, and has shown an openness to new ideas which suggests that if anyone can turn the NHS around, he can.

Kyle, meanwhile, was entrusted with managing the most difficult of recent Labour by-election victories, in Mid Bedfordshire, where the party fought off a strong Liberal Democrat challenge.

Between them, Streeting and Kyle could be the glue that holds a Labour cabinet together. It is no secret that Starmer’s office is worried about the quality of the talent pool from which ministers will be drawn. It was striking that, in the mini-reshuffle in November, two by-election winners went straight onto the front bench and the only other backbenchers who were promoted were former shadow ministers.

No wonder the leader’s office is so invested in candidate selection for the large number of new MPs who are likely to be elected this year. A new government may not have much in the way of workable policy, or indeed much ministerial experience. It is going to need a new cohort of good MPs capable of filling junior ministerial posts – and it is going to need rising stars such as Streeting and Kyle to shine.