If Starmer is a 'political robot', he's one that has been hardwired to win

No drama Starmer. No surprises at last week's manifesto launch, no rabbits, no hats. Some in the audience are getting restless. Reporters yawn, or laugh, when the Labour leader says, for the millionth time, that his father was a toolmaker who worked in a factory. A voter at last Wednesday's Sky News debate told him to his face that he was a "political robot". The complaint is not only about style, but substance too. Opponents on the right lambast the lack of plans and policy detail; on the left they condemn the dearth of radical ambition.

- Jonathan Freedland

Those complaints all miss the same point. Starmer's boringness is not a bug: it's a feature. Those puzzled by Labour's giant poll lead - thinking it odd that Starmer is ahead despite being so unexciting - fail to realise that Starmer is ahead because he is unexciting. There is method in his lack of madness. To be sure, the caution, the silences on whole areas of policy, may exact a price farther down the road, but for now, it's working.

Take the lament that Labour has offered no shiny new major policy initiative. It seems a failing, until you remember Theresa May - fighting what was the worst campaign in living memory, before Rishi Sunak asked her to hold his beer - threw away a 20-point poll lead in 2017 by proposing a social care policy that instantly became the "dementia tax". If she had said nothing, she would have done much better.

Indeed, Labour's fate under its previous leader is crucial to understanding the current strategy. The party made promises that ticked the boxes Labour's left critics urge Starmer to tick now: bold, radical, exciting. But they did not reassure voters that Labour would manage the economy properly. They did not inspire trust.