Sturgeon has finally met her match in the Labour leader

Nicola Sturgeon is still the best politician in Britain. She became leader of the Scottish National Party and first minister of Scotland more than eight years ago, and she is still there. She was briefly eclipsed by Boris Johnson, who broke the Brexit deadlock and won an improbable election - an election that the SNP helped to make possible, although that is another story - but he didn't last.

- JOHN RENTOUL

Now she faces a new rival. Keir Starmer has turned out to be good at politics. Originally elected as a transitional leader someone expected to start the long trudge back to electability, but not, perhaps, to be leader on arrival at the promised land he is now the coming power. The sunflowers are turning to the new sun. Even in Scotland, the Labour Party is coming back to life and looking as if it might be relevant in future.

Because she is such a good politician, Sturgeon senses the threat. Hence the fighting talk in her interview with Lewis Goodall on The News Agents, a political podcast, on Friday. First, she paid Starmer the compliment of disappointment: "I had some good interactions with Keir over Brexit, and actually his position now is one of the reasons that I've lost a bit of respect for him.”

Aligning herself with the suppressed views of many Labour members, she criticised Starmer for triangulating and fudging over the EU: "He won't even countenance going back into the EU or even the single market and the customs union." Then she seamlessly linked this to Starmer's party being "a pale imitation of a Tory government".

This is the standard SNP line, but that it is what many Labour members fear is what makes it so effective. Especially in Scotland, where much of the SNP vote consists of former Labour supporters animated by opposition to the Conservatives: "He needs to have a bit more principle, a bit more difference, and actually a bit more guts to take on the Tories and to take on the right-wing media."