A cascade of cans already kicked down the road

Sir Keir Starmer needs to level with voters – concrete change may only come in a second Labour term

While the Labour leader will look towards the local elections as an important staging post on his path to power, he may also be trying to manage expectations of what a future Labour government can do…

But beyond the drama of the Conservative fortunes and the prime minister’s fate, what is also emerging in this election campaign is the secondary strap of Sir Keir’s ‘change’ message.

When he says change, what he really means is patience, and that is perhaps the national conversation we are going to be having much more in the run-up to this general election.

If concrete change is only scheduled for a second Labour government, then it isn’t easy to see what that “national conversation” would be about. A list of things Sir Keir’s regime isn’t going to achieve could be compiled now, which seems to leave a significant shortage of conversational material for the next five years.