An island unto himself

Voters will respond to more honesty and optimism

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Keir Starmer's first year in Downing Street has been difficult and costly, and he knows it. He is careful by nature, so there is no reason to doubt his admission that he deeply regrets a speech on immigration in which he warned that the country could become an "island of strangers".

This was an important statement, intended to draw a clear line between Labour and an opposition lurching towards populist insurgency and between his own agenda and that of advisers paralysed by fear of the insurgents.

Starmer has yet to catch on as a brand. If he were a new technology he would be stuck, in the language of the Gartner hype cycle, in the trough of disillusionment. His approval ratings are at record lows. Voters' and Labour MPs' anger over his welfare reform plans has proved impossible to ignore. Sympathy for his government's fiscal straitjacket is minimal.