TO THOSE WHO question his readiness to be prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer has a message: look at how he has run the opposition. “I have changed this Labour Party, dragged it back to service, and I will do exactly the same for Westminster,” he told a rally early on in the general-election campaign. It is true that the best clues to his modus operandi are found in the way in which his party has been slowly remade. Less certain is how well this method would work if he leads Labour to victory on July 4th.

The transformation of the party under Sir Keir has been remarkable. In the last election in 2019, under Jeremy Corbyn, a leftist, it won 202 seats, its lowest total since 1935. The following year, with Sir Keir installed as the party’s new leader, a report by Labour Together, a pro-Starmer caucus, warned that a long-term seepage of working-class support could cost it dozens more seats. Campaign funds were being consumed by investigations into allegations of antisemitism and of data-protection breaches, and by litigation from former employees. The tentacles of the hard left were wrapped tightly around the party.