While he is not entirely new to leading the party, it is a bit like being baptized by fire by him. For another five days from Saturday, the head of Labor, Keir Starmer, meets with his soldiers gathered in Congress at the seaside resort of Brighton in the south of England. Elected in April 2020, fifty-something had not been able to walk shoulder to shoulder with the workers last year, due to the pandemic. So here lies the leader of the British opposition in the deep end. With many challenges in front of him.

Back in the polls, with an intention of 35% turnout if legislative elections were held tomorrow, against 40% for conservatives, Keir Starmer would seek to give a party a horizon fragmented by a ten-year electoral defeat. Indecisive on Brexit, mired in anti-Semitism allegations and weighed down by the leftmost line of its former leader Jeremy Corbyn, Labor hit rock bottom in the 2019 legislative elections: there it recorded its worst score in eighty-five years and lost strongholds such as Sedgefield in the north of England, the historic constituency of Tony Blair.

The labor leader should use his concluding speech to clarify his line

In contrast, Boris Johnson, the ragged Prime Minister Tory, can claim to lead the vaccination campaign against Covid-19 and give rise to the Brexit requested by his supporters, despite the paucity of manpower and emerging products. That’s enough to make Keir Starmer’s speech inaudible, though he’s plowed the ground all summer long to meet his supporters.

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The Labor leader is expected to use his closing speech on Wednesday to clarify a line still understood by voters and to set out his “alternative vision” for the UK. He gave a taste of this through a 35-page long note on Thursday, with centrist accents meant to seduce both the working classes of the north of England magnetized by Boris Johnson’s anti-EU discourse and the more educated urban youth . . Priority to working class families, economy in service of citizens without “pressure”, rejection of nationalism… “The people of this country cry out for change,” he says.