In office, something very different will be required, but steady caution has brought Labour to the brink of power, says Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland
The left is only able to demand that an apparently imminent Labour government be bolder in office because Starmer has got the party to the brink of victory – and has done it by doing the very things they opposed.
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”.
Yet now the Conservatives are falling apart, reduced to warning of a Labour “supermajority” – misusing the term that does not, as Grant Shapps seems to think, mean “a really big majority”, but one capable of overriding a constitutional veto – as they plead with the voters for mercy.
History suggests the Lib Dems do best when disaffected Tory voters feel safe casting a ballot that will put a Labour prime minister in Downing Street.
Tactical voting depends, yes, on collective loathing of the Tories, but also a Labour alternative palatable to the broadest possible number: that rarely means a leader who stirs the passions of the party faithful.
If he gets his mandate, he could use it as blanket permission to pursue a range of serious policy shifts about which he stayed mum during the campaign – whether on investment in infrastructure and public services or resetting the relationship with the European Union – all in the name of growing the economy.
But, given the scale of the task that will confront the next government – a social fabric that lies in tatters, a weak economy, ailing public services and a country that feels broken – it is no guide for how that power should be used.
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