Three foundations, five missions, six measurable milestones, seven pillars, hairdryers, damp walls, stabilising certainty, thudding gauntlets, ground zero, tepid baths, warm baths, tooth and nail, nail and tooth: that wasn’t so much a wide-ranging speech by Sir Keir Starmer as a wild slalom through dark and hitherto uncharted expanses of metaphor. Don’t call the government’s Plan for Change a relaunch. This, we are told, is simply when things really get going, with a new discipline and focus on what really matters to the electorate.
Why, then, did so much of the prime minister’s speech feel so wearily familiar? It’s often the case that his words obscure more than they reveal, and much of what he said yesterday at Pinewood Studios — where they made Mission:
