Labour leader Keir Starmer needs to be more than not Jeremy Corbyn – Ayesha Hazarika

This was the week when Sir Keir Starmer’s honeymoon period came to a screeching end.

Keir Starmer during a visit to a community pharmacy vaccination centre at Asda Watford Supercentre (Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire)

When I say honeymoon, I’m not talking Amalfi coast, more a wet-weekend camping. Normally sure-footed and forensic at Prime Minister’s Questions, Starmer stumbled over whether he had said something he clearly had, and issued a correction.

No big deal in the scheme of things and it’s refreshing for a politician to admit they got it wrong. But the timing wasn’t great, and it comes off the back of a nervousness amongst even some of his more ardent supporters in the parliamentary Labour Party.

It’s acknowledged he made a flying start in difficult circumstances, overcame a huge deficit in the polls left by his predecessor and has seen the Labour Party “level up” with the Tories.

But he has a long way to go and there’s an anxiety about how and if that is possible. Forget the tedious, inward-looking row about flags and patriotism that we on the left love to have every few years, and watch the real issues, like the vaccines programme.

While Labour MPs are pleased their constituents are getting jabs, they know this is a shot in the arm for Boris Johnson.

One said to me: “We are fighting about whether it’s OK to love your country just after the death of Captain Sir Tom as they hit the 10 million vaccinations mark – doesn’t look great.” To be fair to Starmer’s team, “flag-gate” wasn’t something they briefed, it was a leak, but it makes Labour look irrelevant.

If you want to become Prime Minister, you cannot be allergic to the British flag, especially if you lead the Labour Party.

Briefing out your “pride” in sporting Union Jack undercrackers suggests you are not allergic to the flag, but simply wearing them isn't going to magically whisk you to 10 Downing Street either.

Not hating your country is basic. Explaining how you seek to make it better and bloom is the hard bit. That’s where Starmer and team need to up their game.

No one sensible is suggesting that Labour starts pumping out the big policy plans. That would be mad when we don’t know how the country and economy will be post-pandemic. There have been some gentle ventures into sketching out some policy contours, but they haven’t really had any cut through. Please, sir, I want some more.

It’s difficult in the middle of a pandemic and the balance between being seen as supplicant or opportunistic is delicate. But we do need to hear and see more from Starmer.

David Cameron was popping up all time when he was an Opposition leader. Visibility is vital. Labour needs to start mapping out a direction of travel.

Starmer should be inspired by Joe Biden’s quiet radicalism. This is the time to get out there and make the case for Labour values.

This is time for Starmer to not just be a weathervane but a political signpost; there will never be a more important moment as this pandemic shakes our society to its core. The country is crying out for an energetic, relentless Labour Party.

Labour needs to raise its game, and that includes the Shadow Cabinet. Starmer got off to a good start by defining himself against Jeremy Corbyn. But that can’t be it. He now needs to show the country who he really is and what he stands for.