Keir Starmer has claimed that the main reason Labour suffered its worst electoral defeat for 80 years in December because of “the leadership” of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.
During his time as the party's Brexit spokesperson and in the leadership campaign Mr Starmer was reluctant to criticise Mr Corbyn - who remained extremely popular among the party's membership.
But in an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Starmer, who won the leadership on a landslide, said Mr Corbyn was the main issue which came up when he went to more than 40 constituencies where he knocked on doors and spoke to campaign teams.
“The topic of conversation was always what was coming up . . . anybody who knocks on doors knows a number of things came up,” he said. “The leadership of Labour party was number one, fair or unfair,” Sir Keir told the FT Magazine.
Mr Starmer said the party's programme for government was also an issue with voters turned off by the “overload” of Labour’s manifesto.
This was a common complaint at the time with many MPs who said that the electorate saw the plan - which included proposals to nationalise several industries, hand £300bn of shares to workers, and plans for an extra £83bn a year of tax and spending - was unworkable.
“People thought there was too much in it and because there was too much in it they didn’t believe any of it,” Mr Starmer told the FT.
Mr Starmer has already distanced himself from the previous administration by sacking a number of those close to Jeremy Corbyn including Ian Lavery and Jon Trickett and instead promoting those on the so-called "soft left".
But policy-wise so far the shift is more subtle with hints at a more social democratic rather than purely socialist agenda despite the retention of some of the radical language of the Corbyn era.
He told the FT: "The levels of inequality . . . are now so deeply ingrained that only transformative change is going to do something about it."
Although he has been criticised by some on the left for what they see as his reluctance to attack Boris Johnson.
He argues he is holding the Tories to account at a time of national crisis which would have presented a major challenge to a government of any stripe and that Labour will be ignored if it simply criticises the government just for the sake of it.
