Labour leader Keir Starmer's New Year speech fell apart in a millisecond

This week's newsletter extracts are from the Sunday National's chief political correspondent Judith Duffy. The Wee Ginger Dug will return next week.

FOR what must have been a millisecond, I found myself nodding along in agreement with Keir Starmer.

“You’re right to be anti-Westminster,” he proclaimed, as he delivered a keynote speech in Bristol.

Any notion he might actually finally get what around half of Scotland think disappeared quickly, as he tried to make the case that Labour are the only way a change in politics and how the country is run can be delivered.

How exactly this will happen, of course, remains to be seen.

As usual in the speech, there was a distinct lack of any new details on policy which would help the nation pin down what exactly a vote for Labour would mean.

Instead, there was the message to choose hope. Choose national renewal. Choose responsibility of service. Choose what politics can be.

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A startling insight into how dull Trainspotting might have been if it had been about MPs.

After the speech there were questions to Starmer from journalists on what his government would do about annoying specifics such as tax thresholds, immigration and when funding for green technology would be delivered – these were brushed aside.

In the end, Channel 4 News correspondent Paul McNamara summed it up, quizzing Starmer on his team’s claims that he has got lots of policies, adding pointedly “all two pages of them”.

He asked: “If two years in, both Labour former policy chiefs and voters don’t know what a Keir Starmer government will stand for, what is it you are getting wrong?”

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The answer from Starmer was that he had set out “five driving missions” of the Labour government – which seem to have replaced the 10 firm – and now deleted – pledges he made during the party’s leadership contest.

But, of course, the real reason is that he doesn’t have to get anything right – so far.

All he has to do at the moment is simply not be the chaotic and corrupt Tories to stay ahead in the UK polls.

The message he’s relying on is that it’s all about Project Hope.

That might chime with voters in England. But here in Scotland, we’re old enough to remember when Project Fear was a thing.

Look how well that went, with Labour cosying up to the Tories to promise Unionist classics such as “Scotland will stay in the EU” and “Scotland will have cheaper energy bills”.

So yes, Sir Keir, things can be better.

But Scotland needs real change. And that won’t happen with the Labour leader – whatever he finally decides to stand for – taking the keys to Number 10.