OPINION - Keir Starmer may be 'sleepy', but that's an improvement on an increasingly desperate Rishi Sunak

Is it “sleepy” Keir or “desperate” Rishi? Take your pick of insults in week one of the campaign, because there is plenty more invective to pep up the weeks up to the election on July 4. The respective camps, however, will be based more on real dividing lines than slingshots.

Rishi Sunak has moved swiftly to draw one of these in an “age-related” tax break meaning a £100-a-year boost to pensioners’ income. The amount is small, but the message is that the Tories are more likely to look after pensioner interests — and Labour does not have a policy on pensions to offset this gambit.

More broadly, a useful way to think of Campaign 2024 is as a series of paradoxes. Despite being the challenger, Labour’s stance is essentially defensive: Keir Starmer knows his 20-point poll advantage could lead to complacency, a message he hammers home in his morning meetings via his campaigns manager Morgan McSweeney. The team quip is that there are “two people in the country who don’t think Labour will definitely be the next government — they are Morgan and Keir”.

He also has a contradictory job in boosting support on the Left of the party, where anger over the changing position of the leadership over a Gaza ceasefire has led to worries that many activists will fail to turn out on polling day. Meanwhile he must pitch for business-friendly centre-Right votes to achieve the powerful swing directly from the Tories to Labour that he needs to form a solid majority.

The first point explains why the Labour leader used the word “socialist” to define his views yesterday. Yet Team Starmer also chose this early phase of the campaign to pull together a letter to The Times of supporters from business, finance and tech. There are some non-surprises. Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia founder, is highlighted as backing Labour, which is less than surprising as he offered to advise Ed Miliband in 2015, pitched into Labour’s internal rows against the antisemitic traits underlying Jeremy Corbyn’s stance on Israel, dislikes the Daily Mail and, for good measure, is married to one of Tony Blair’s former aides.

Winnow out those who usually lean pro-Labour though, and there is enough heft there to support the claim that the party is now accepted, if not yet wholly trusted, by business. This is not to deny that the recipe for growth and inward investment under Labour is vague. But the frustration with what one British CEO I encountered recently termed the “moron premium” of erratic Tory politics has convinced many wealth-creators that the Opposition is the lesser of two evils.

The “sleepiness” attack was a crude way of highlighting Starmer’s age (61) and pedestrian verbal delivery. That can easily backfire — given that, under the Tories, politics has felt over-eventful or “chaotic” (a Labour poison dart which will keep flying).

Sunak does have energy — he’s happiest darting about on campaigns, covering hundreds of miles from south to north already, and gamely, if inexpertly, dribbling a football with schoolkids. But the sheer oddity of the launch optics was aggravated by the decision to unveil an interesting but complex plan to boost defences and civic resilience via a poorly explained voluntary national service scheme.

The next paradox of Campaign 2024 is that while the Government controlled the timing of this showdown, its own MPs and candidates have been caught a lot more off-guard than Labour. So Central Office has spent the past couple of days messaging that the jerky start can be put aside, once ministers hit the campaign trail.

Finally, seat selection tells its own story. Labour is nailing down its final candidates, including Praful Nargund for the “difficult” terroir of North Islington where its choice of candidate to stand against Jeremy Corbyn has divided the local party.

By contrast, the Conservatives still have more than 150 seats to fill, including a score of potentially winnable ones. Trouble is, for Sunak many of these are being vacated by prominent figures like Michael Gove, who do not much fancy life in Opposition — and there is little time left for careful vetting.

This week will see Labour aim to reassure us that it can be trusted on national security, a pressing task given the Ukraine crisis has highlighted the dangers of paring back investment in the armed forces. Starmer meanwhile can afford to be boring, if he can equate that in voters’ minds with solidity.

Rishi Sunak needs to get his own army battle-ready. As it stands, they’re sulking in the barracks.

Anne McElvoy hosts the Power Play interview podcast for Politico