It's Rishi v Keir ...and they're off!

BE IN NO doubt, the sound you heard last week was the starting pistol being fired in readiness for the next general election.

- Nick Ferrari

In under 24 hours, both the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition gave keynote addresses which, bizarrely, were delivered within a few hundred yards of each other in the Stratford area of East London.

For many that already puts Labour one down by the way.

Surely Stockton South or Sedgefield would speak more to the ambitions of the Labour Party than the former site of the London Olympics that has turned into a hipster’s paradise, where those deluded souls are happy to shell out £5.95 for a skinny vanilla latte.

Not only was it the first speech of the year for Rishi Sunak, it was his first major speech to the nation since he gained power via the most unenviable set of circumstances last autumn.

He had faced criticism for “going on the missing list” over Christmas as the NHS crisis bit, the unions stopped the nation in its tracks and people started to open energy and credit card bills with hands trembling from both the cold and the sheer fear they wouldn’t be able to pay them.