As they prepare to enter their third year in command of the British Labour Party, Keir Starmer and his team are keen to present themselves as an alternative government-in-waiting.

For much of 2021, this prospect would have seemed far-fetched. In almost two hundred opinion polls conducted between the end of January and the start of November, Starmer’s party had the lead in just one. Two high-profile by-elections during that period saw Labour lose one seat to the Conservatives and come within a hair’s breadth of losing another.

Reviewing Starmer’s first in-person conference speech as leader in September 2021, the Guardian’s Aditya Chakrabortty described him as a figure “auditioning for the role of red-faced, purse-lipped manager, perennially disappointed in us, his ungrateful customers.” Chakrabortty found it impossible to imagine Starmer “ever commanding a surge of enthusiasm or interest, even from the ground troops who will eventually go door-knocking for him.”