‘No complacency’ Keir is right to urge caution – Labour has history snatching defeat from the jaws of victory

Labour’s runaway momentum and tantalising 21-point poll lead can fizzle into a crushing election defeat in the blink of an eye, writes John Rentoul, just as it has time and again

The job is not quite finished yet (PA Wire)

We have been here before. A media consensus pumped up by opinion polls shaping political coverage in the run-up to an election. I remember the 1992 election campaign. Even Tony Blair, who generally refused to believe opinion polls pointing to a Labour win, briefly thought he was going to be a minister when one poll put Labour far ahead.

I remember sitting with Peter Kellner, then a journalist, later president of YouGov, on the roof of the BBC watching the dawn break on the morning after the election. We had worked together on the election-night results programme – now we reflected on why most commentators had been so sure that Neil Kinnock would be prime minister.

I remember the 2015 election. Ed Miliband expected to be in No 10, either at the head of a majority Labour government or relying on the support of minor parties. He had had talks with most of them beforehand, including the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland. I remember travelling on David Cameron’s battle bus through Liberal Democrat seats in middle England and wondering why we were there rather than in Conservative-Labour marginals.