Starmer's 'six steps' are not Labour's final offer to voters

A tale of two speeches, by Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, kicked off what party strategists call the "long campaign" for the general election. It will be very long - probably lasting six months.

- ANDREW GRICE

Although their target audience was the voters, in the short term the two leaders will probably be more successful in cheering up their own troops. Senior Conservative MPs welcomed Sunak's focus on defence and national security and his first attempt to talk about what five more years of Tory government would mean. The Tories have belatedly realised they must defend their record in the past 14 years, however embarrassing the Johnson and Truss chapters. If they don't, it is easier for Labour to make the election a referendum on that record.

One minister told me Sunak's speech might just mark "a turning point" when the 20-point opinion poll gap starts to close, arguing the PM can finally point to genuine progress in meeting his five pledges to answer the charge of presiding over "broken Britain".

I suspect this is wildly optimistic, and Starmer's speech reminded us why when he said the Tories had "beaten the hope out of people". They do not feel that "broken Britain" has been fixed. Starmer's pitch at his slick launch event in Essex offered gradual change, ending the Tories' chaos without inflicting even more disruption. Hence his claim that "stability is change". His other goal was to tackle voter scepticism - and, in some cases, cynicism - about whether Labour would really be any different.