That Starmer fella...

I think that's probably a reference to my post, and it's not what I said. My point is that they will campaign further to right as labour moves into areas where they share policies.

However, the current Tories are right wing populists. They're neither centrists nor left.

The Tories have never been afraid of government spending that benefits the right sort of people.

Austerity and hostility towards the wrong kinds of people (benefit scroungers, public sector workers, coloureds, foreigns, etc) remains.

Do we really believe the Tories are heading to the right? I think their shift left is more marked than to the right. To me it seems they’re occupying more of the centre ground than ever before.

It's interesting in that populism tends to be a bit of a chameleon - they'll take whatever will win them votes, there's no underlying coherent message beyond that - which makes arguing against them a bit like trying to wrestle mist. In places they occupy the centre ground - their repudiation of austerity in particular makes it harder for Starmer to occupy the anti-austerity ground that Corbyn made his own - but as far as the culture war is concerned they're way off to the extreme right. Huge numbers of Johnson's own MPs are lockdown sceptics.

I suspect Starmer's strategy is likely to be a similar grab-bag - progressive policies wrapped up in the flag. I'm not sure that's enough, though - we need a big story to push through and we don't yet have that.

EDIT: That WASPI women pledge wasn't the only costing problem with the 2019 manifesto. Let's not pretend 2019 was fully costed. It wasn't. https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-the-gaps-in-labours-spending-plans