Starmer will say whatever it takes to win... which is good

You have to admire Keir Starmer's ambition. He wants to fight the 1945, 1964 and 1997 elections all at once

- JOHN RENTOUL

"In 2024 it will have to be all three," he told a nonplussed Progressive Britain conference at the TUC's Congress House yesterday.

What he meant was that Labour will have to recover from the trauma of coronavirus, which was like a war, modernise the economy as Harold Wilson tried to do, and save the public services. Not only that, he needs to be Neil Kinnock and John Smith combined, plus he will pretend to be Tony Blair as well (if that is the sort of thing you like).

He aims to achieve in four years what it took Kinnock, Smith and Blair to do in 14, from the depths of defeat in 1983. He needs to be like Kinnock, coming from the left to drag the party back to the median voter; he needs to be like Smith, offering reassurance, one more heave and mainstream Labour values; and he needs to sound like Blair because the party knows in its heart of hearts that that is the only way to win.

Rhetorically, he has to complete a longer journey across the political spectrum than the three of them together. He started further to the so-called left than Kinnock, as a qualified supporter of Jeremy Corbyn. Kinnock was never even a qualified supporter of Tony Benn, for example. And yesterday Starmer ended up trying to position himself as more Blairite than Blair.