Keir Starmer yesterday delivered a speech he should have made in July.
Ever since Labour won the general election it has struggled to explain what it wants to do with power. The Prime Minister gave the impression of someone who had assembled the ingredients for governing but appeared to have mislaid the recipe.
His Plan for Change seeks to bring some order to the kitchen. There are now six clear goals by which the Government will be judged: improving living standards, cutting NHS waiting lists, building more homes, making streets safer, boosting green energy and supporting young children.
Looming over Mr Starmer’s speech was a ghost from the past, Boris Johnson, and a potential menace in the future, Nigel Farage. If Starmerism is anything it is best defined as anti-Borisism.
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Wiktor Szymanowicz/Future Publis)
The Prime Minister has looked at his predecessor and concluded he offered a text-book example of how not to run a government. Yes, you got the entertainment, but you also got someone who repeatedly made promises he then failed to honour.
If you want an example look no further than this week’s National Audit Office report on the state of the prisons estate which slams Johnson for failing to deliver on his pledge to provide 20,000 more prison places. You could add to the list the failure to build the 40 new hospitals, the failure to reduce net migration and the failure to level up communities.
Mr Starmer is determined to end the days of unrealistic bluster and broken promises. But he knows that if he fails to meet his milestones then populists such as Farage stand ready to pounce.
Labour now has a plan. The result of the next election rests or falls on whether it will work.