Now Keir Starmer is told to ‘up his game’… in The Guardian! The left-wing newspaper claims the Labour leader is ‘stuck’

• John Harris offered a withering assessment of the leader in his column
• Read more: Starmer accused of a ‘spectacular own goal’ after his latest attack ad

Sir Keir Starmer is ‘stuck’ and ‘urgently needs to up his game’, a columnist in Left-wing newspaper The Guardian has claimed.

In a withering assessment, John Harris wrote that the Labour leader is ‘coasting’ while Rishi Sunak is ‘just about managing to look like an efficient, stable and confident leader’.

Mr Harris’s column in yesterday’s Guardian also criticised Labour’s attack ads – one of which claimed the PM does not think child sex abusers should go to prison – as ‘crass’.

And he warned that Labour’s ‘under-performance leaves room for a Conservative revival and a narrow election win’.

Mr Harris said that while a Tory defeat is ‘still the most likely outcome’, the ‘battle between the two big Westminster parties has subtly shifted’.

Guardian columnist John Harris said Keir Starmer was ‘coasting’

The scathing ads released by Labour attacking Rishi Sunak

‘Labour’s average poll lead is now in the teens rather than 20s, Starmer and Sunak’s personal ratings are almost even, and gurus of political gambling have been heard advising against any bets on an outright Labour win,’ he wrote. 

READ MORE:  Convictions for sex offences fell sharply on Keir Starmer’s watch

‘The key reasons why are not hard to work out: notwithstanding such grinding problems as the ongoing strikes in the NHS, Sunak is just about managing to look like an efficient, stable, confident kind of leader, while Starmer seems stuck – ahead, but coasting.’

The columnist accused Sir Keir and his senior shadow ministers of speaking in a ‘deadening political argot full of abstract nouns and concepts that have little resonance in people’s everyday lives’.

And instead of likening ‘Starmerism’ to New Labour’s 1997 glories, he suggested it was more akin to the ‘murky years’ from 2005 to 2010 when the project ‘lost its way’ and ‘headed for defeat’.

Mr Harris said the party’s strategy seems ‘woefully incoherent’. He added: ‘Up until the recent spurt of crass anti-Sunak attack ads… there was a drive to make Starmer’s lack of political experience an asset and portray him as a dutiful public servant uninterested in the usual Westminster games: now, he looks like the opposite.’

Labour’s lead has shrunk to the narrowest margin since Mr Sunak took office. Polling last week gave Labour a 14 point lead over the Conservatives – down three points in a week.

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