Keir Starmer’s strategy is to emphasise Labour’s patriotism and to cultivate an aura of reassuring respectability: that’s the content of a leaked presentation, detailed in the Guardian, and also what you would guess if you looked at anything Starmer or the shadow cabinet does or says on any given day of the week. You can see it in Starmer’s claim at Prime Minister’s Questions today that “schools are closed and borders are open”: which is also a very old political trick of linking an area on which Labour are trusted (schools) with one on which they have become much less so (immigration).
That, in of itself, is a good thing: a party’s strategy shouldn’t be particularly surprising. It should be something you can pretty much work out by just by looking at and listening to what it does. The more a party’s strategy needs to be explained or is a shock, the more trouble that party is in.
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