Starmer's audition for PM: right Keir, right now?

"A stage-invading protester inadvertently handed Keir Starmer the perfect start to his Labour conference speech," said Lucy Fisher and George Parker in the Financial Times. 

After the man dumped a load of glitter over his head – a gesture, it seems, in support of electoral reform – Starmer merely removed his jacket, explained that he and his colleagues had transformed Labour because they wanted it to be a party of "power" rather than "protest", and got on with his speech. 

And a very creditable speech it was too, said Juliet Samuel in The Times. Starmer "identified the malaise hanging over the country, the sense of decline, missed opportunities and mounting costs, and tried to offer a sense of optimism". He promised "to build and invest", with new infrastructure and mass house-building: 1.5 million new homes during a five-year Parliament. "We are the builders," he declared. It was a message that "resonated". This may have been the moment that Starmer won the battle of public perception, said Jason Beattie in the Daily Mirror. He looks like "a prime minister in waiting".

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'No charisma, no policies'

Hardly, said the Daily Mail. Where Starmer laid out his policies, they were disturbing. He said he wanted to "bulldoze" the planning system and build new towns – which risks "an explosion in urban sprawl". He wants to "speed ahead" with net zero, which we know will impose a "huge financial burden on millions of ordinary families". But the many omissions were just as disturbing: he didn't mention the small-boats crisis or record levels of legal migration.

"Nor did he have anything to say on tax, his plans for Brexit", or how he'd deal with public-sector strikes. Inevitably, Starmer was dull, too, said Janet Daley in The Daily Telegraph. "You can have leaders without charisma if they have a solid message – like Clement Attlee." And you can have leaders with charisma, but no detailed policy programme, like Tony Blair. "But can you win with a leader who has neither of those things?"

'Most underrated politician of our time'

Starmer is the most underrated politician of our time, said Janan Ganesh in the FT. When he became leader in April 2020, the Tories had a 22-point lead. "He himself was a joke figure well into 2021." Now, barring disaster, Labour will form the next government. Some claim he's just lucky. "Come on." Starmer lost his first 18 months of leadership to a pandemic that made the opposition irrelevant. Yet he had a double-digit poll lead even before Liz Truss "immolated" the economy – an amazing feat.

And he has identified a vote-winning cause, said Henry Hill in The Daily Telegraph. Spiralling house prices threaten to turn an entire generation of southerners against the Tories: London is not just "trending rapidly" away from them, it's spraying angry, precarious voters out into the commuter belt. Rishi Sunak said nothing at all about housing in his speech. Starmer, by contrast, wants "to put the true-blue Shires to spade" and fill them with his voters. "And you know what? Good luck to him."