The gap between Labour and the Tories is not insignificant

There are few policy differences between the Conservatives and the Labour Party, as has been pointed out approvingly by me and disapprovingly by others.

- JOHN RENTOUL

A government led by Keir Starmer would spend a bit more on the NHS and schools, paid for by taxing non-doms and private schools a bit more.

There are other possible differences that are unclear, or that will have been overtaken by events by the time of the election. Labour would extend help with gas and electricity bills, paid for by raising a bit more from the windfall tax on oil and gas companies, but Jeremy Hunt will probably do something similar in the Budget next month.

Labour also currently intends to borrow large additional sums to pay for a Green Prosperity Plan, but I think Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, will tweak that policy so that it meets Hunt’s new rule against borrowing more than 3 per cent of national income in a year. Starmer endorsed Gordon Brown’s plan to replace the House of Lords with an Assembly of the Nations and Regions, but neither he nor Brown said how its members would be chosen.

Which puts Starmer in a similar position to that of Tony Blair between 1994 and 1997. Some readers would rather I never mentioned Blair again, but whether you are for him or against him, I don’t think you can understand politics now without understanding politics then.