Keir Starmer insists he’s changed the party of Corbyn and disarmament

Before he became prime minister for the first time Tony Blair said his priorities were education, education and education. To judge by Keir Starmer’s lectern, you might have thought his equivalent was “change”.

So what? You’d have been wrong. Six days into the campaign, Starmer’s mantra is shaping up to be “security”, and the idea has a certain logic.

At home: security in terms of defence is far from the highest issue on British voters’ minds, but deployed as an umbrella term it encapsulates neatly the range of issues on which Starmer wants to fight the election, from the economy and energy to the border and crime. In his first major campaign speech yesterday he used the ‘s’ word seven times.

Abroad: security is job one for any government, and it hasn’t looked so fragile since the cold war. The Israel-Hamas conflict is diverting attention and resources from Ukraine, where Putin is testing the West’s willingness to fight for democracy and Trump threatens to sue for peace if president.

In Islington: Starmer’s speech was designed to define himself in opposition to Rishi Sunak but also to Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader who opposed sending arms to Ukraine and, before that, the British nuclear deterrent. Corbyn has been kicked out of the party and will run as an independent for Islington North, but is still invoked as a bogeyman to remind all those who turned from Labour in 2019. 

Starmer asked the question for them: has Labour changed enough since then to be trusted? He insisted the answer was yes, “because I have changed this party, permanently”.

Notional service. Security is traditionally a strong suit for the Conservatives. Hence Sunak’s big announcement for the first weekend of his campaign: a plan for every 18 year-old to sign up for a year of compulsory national service. The choice between that and volunteering did little to placate Tory MPs already angered by Sunak’s decision to call a snap election in the first place. 

• Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister, said the national service plan had been “sprung” on candidates (not that he had let it or the campaign prevent him taking a pre-planned holiday in Greece).
• Andrew Murrison, the minister responsible for defence people and families, had said only days before there were no plans for such a policy, warning it could “damage morale, recruitment and retention and would consume professional military and naval resources”.
• Military experts agreed. According to the Guardian, Alan West, a former chief of the naval staff, said it was a “bonkers” plan. Richard Dannatt, a former chief of the general staff, said it was “electoral opportunism”. Both warned about the cost of the scheme, estimated at £2.5 billion by the Tories, who said two-fifths would be covered by “cracking down on tax evasion and avoidance”.

Wedge issues. There is still time for Sunak to think again. While Labour has made headway with its manifesto – the shadow team having submitted policy ideas before Easter – the Tories are not thought to be so far advanced. As a result, their policies are being dribbled out piecemeal and without consulting colleagues. That, combined with the ongoing fury at the choice of an early election, is driving the leader and his parliamentary party further apart than ever. 

Worth noting: Starmer’s speech was given in a coastal town in Sussex, a Tory heartland in usual times. The location suggests a high level of confidence. 

Compare and contrast Sunak’s whistle stop tour of the four nations last week, which took him to the Titanic Quarter in Belfast. Tory MPs, many of whose fate is reliant on their leader’s campaigning ability, texted Tortoise in dismay at the obvious optics fail. Coming so soon after Sunak’s drowned rat campaign launch speech, more than a few have their heads in their hands.  

Days to 4 July: 37