Sir Keir Starmer’s team hasn’t entirely banished fear of failure, but the party conference was mainly characterised by rising hope
, a member of the shadow cabinet said to me: “In his head, Keir can picture himself walking into Number 10.”
An organisation that was in thrall to Jeremy Corbyn and his unmerry comrades not so long ago has been Starmerised, but that felt so unthreatening to the leadership that one senior shadow cabinet member could simply shrug: “It won’t be in the manifesto.” It is a basic of how democracy works that Labour can only prevail at the election by persuading people who are past supporters of the Conservatives to switch sides. Yet many Labour folk have often been allergic, and some downright antagonistic, to the idea of making converts of the previously hostile. Call them the “never kissed a Tory” tendency.
Labour’s growing confidence comes with important caveats. A lot of senior people still regard their hefty opinion poll lead as “unreal” or “soft” and expect it to shrink in the run-up to the election. The party has lost so often it can still be afflicted by what one shadow cabinet member calls “beaten dog syndrome”.
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