In thrall to a character who may not truly exist any more, the Labour leader kicked off his election campaign in Purfleet

• Tim Burrows is the author of The Invention of Essex

Call him Southend Keir. The kind of geezer who when in search of a new job – in this case the next prime minister of the UK – rolls up his sleeves and takes himself to dockside Essex. That’s where the Labour leader launched his six pledges for the next election on Thursday, in an aircraft hangar-sized rehearsal space in Purfleet, a town in Thurrock known for its 18th-century gunpowder battery. But there were no explosive pledges. Instead, there were anaesthetised assurances that if elected, Labour will, tentatively, try to make people’s lives a little bit better. Just not straight away.

The significance of Essex was not lost on the Times, which pointed out the party’s attempts “to win over the modern equivalent of Blair’s ‘Essex man’”. Simon Heffer, the Telegraph columnist, came up with the term Essex man in 1990 to describe a new kind of voter who materialised during the Thatcher era. He had sharp elbows and worked as a trader in the City of London, near to where his unionised father had worked on the docks. He may have grown up in a socially rented east London flat, but he now lived in leafier environs on the other side of the newly built M25, where he was likely to have bought a council house.

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The smile was the giveaway. Asked whether he was “just a copycat” of Tony Blair at the launch of his Blair-style pledge card on Thursday, Keir Starmer positively glowed. He was delighted with the comparison, which the entire exercise was surely designed to encourage. Blair “won three elections in a row”, Starmer said, beaming. Of course, he’s thrilled to be likened to a serial winner. And yet the more apt parallel is also a cautionary one. It’s not with Starmer’s long-ago predecessor, but with his would-be counterpart across the Atlantic: Joe Biden.

It’s natural that the sight of a Labour leader, a lawyer from north London, on course for Downing Street after a long era of Tory rule, would have people digging out the Oasis CDs and turning back the clock to 1997: Labour election victories are a rare enough commodity to prompt strong memories. But, as many veterans of that period are quick to point out, the circumstances of 2024 are very different. The UK economy was humming then and it’s parlous now. Optimism filled the air then, while too few believe genuine change is even possible now. And politics tended to be about material matters then, tax and public services, rather than dominated by polarising cultural wars as it is now.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

Plaid Cymru has ended its cooperation agreement with the Welsh Labour government in the Senedd over concerns over donations to leader Vaughan Gething

The Daily Express and Daily Mail have both asked questions about the taxing of pensions. Jeremy Hunt is on combative grounds here. He is asked when calling Labour’s plans a “myth” is he accusing them of lying. He says:

Well, calling them a myth is about as rude as I get. But frankly, it is a lie. I don’t make any bones about it. It is fake news. And it is an absolute disgrace to try and win this election by scaring pensioners about a policy that is not true.

Our argument is this is about the future growth of the economy, because we can see looking around the world that more lightly taxed economies have more dynamic private sectors, they grow faster, and in the end that is more money for precious public services like the NHS.

Commitments range from cutting NHS waiting times to delivering economic stability – and are united by a lack of detail

• UK politics live – latest updates

Keir Starmer has unveiled six commitments which, he said, would constitute the first steps taken by a Labour government. The Labour leader was reluctant to use the word “pledge”, but the six statements inevitably drew comparisons with Tony Blair’s 1997 pledge card.

Unlike Labour’s promises going into that election, however, the steps Starmer outlined were generally vague and their success is likely to prove difficult to measure.

The opposition leader knows that he is being measured for the highest office in the land

The outward purpose of Labour’s campaign event in Thurrock on Thursday was to launch Sir Keir Starmer’s six “first steps” commitments, most of which were already familiar in some way. This was duly done, and with presentational panache. But the event had a far larger objective – to make it clear to the public that the Labour party is now ready to govern Britain.

In all but name this was a general election campaign launch, even though the vote is probably months away. The shadow cabinet was there, seated in rows. The event was professionally prepared, choreographed to include personal stories, none more powerful than that from the cancer patient Nathaniel Dye. There were also important video endorsements of Labour, including from the CEO of Boots, Seb James, and from the former senior Met police officer Neil Basu. Each pledge was presented by the relevant shadow minister. It was structured and slick, evidence of a party that knows what it is doing.

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Endorsements came from business, policing and the heart of the establishment – the only question is how to avoid complacency

From corporations to counter-terrorism officers to coffee shop owners, Keir Starmer’s launch event on Thursday was a stark display of how inevitable a Labour victory now seems.

It had the feeling of an election launch – a party leader in shirt sleeves, tightly choreographed pitches from the most senior shadow cabinet ministers, candidates from target seats, and voters ready to explain why they were switching their vote.

Party leader says six election pledges revealed at launch event will take two terms of government to materialise

• UK politics live –latest updates

There will be no “quick fix” to the deep problems Labour will inherit if it wins the next election, Keir Starmer has said while unveiling his party’s six election pledges amid a fanfare of endorsements from senior public figures.

The Labour leader said “most reasonable, tolerant people” in the country wanted what his party wanted for Britain, before he received an extraordinary endorsement from the Boots chief executive, Sebastian James, an Old Etonian who was a member of the private all-male Bullingdon Club alongside David Cameron.

Readers remain unconvinced about how the rightwing MP can help the party’s ‘national renewal’

Who could argue with Keir Starmer’s desire for the Labour party to be “less tribal” or being welcoming to those “who want to join in our object of national renewal” (Labour should be ‘less tribal’, says Keir Starmer after Elphicke defection, 10 May). But platitudes are normally expected of leaders operating at the fag end of a failing government, not those poised to take power.

Natalie Elphicke may have apologised for the moral offence of insulting sexually assaulted women. She may deny the ethical offence of lobbying on behalf of her disgraced ex-husband. But neither she nor her Labour cheerleaders have explained how her rabidly rightwing vision will produce the romantic synergy with Labour policies that’s necessary to achieve “national renewal”.
Paul McGilchrist
Cromer, Norfolk

With no date in sight, the waiting game drags on. So Labour spells out the message again, and again

Call it the phoney war. The government has long since stopped governing. Politics is now conducted entirely through the prism of a general election campaign. The Tories go through a weekly relaunch in a desperate hunt for credibility. Something that might allow them to at least save some face.

Losing has already been factored into everyone’s calculations. But still we don’t have a date as Rishi Sunak hangs on for a miracle. At this rate, by the time the election is announced we’re all going to be thoroughly knackered.

Conservative party chair Richard Holden says Labour leader ‘doesn’t have courage or conviction to stick to a single pledge’

Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, is up now. He highlights the energy pledge.

4) Set up Great British Energy a publicly-owned clean power company, to cut bills for good and boost energy security, paid for by a windfall tax on oil and gas giants.

This is a seismic moment as Westminster prepares for power to pass from one party to another. It will affect everything in some way

The Conservative party’s lurch into collective hyperventilation after 2016 gave Britain five prime ministers in eight years. Yet changes of government from one party to another are actually remarkably rare. There have been only three of them in the past half century: to the Tories in 1979, to Labour in 1997 and then back to the Tories in 2010. Lucy Powell, the shadow leader of the House of Commons, pointed out in a speech this week that, at the age of 49, she has only witnessed two changes of UK party government in her adult life; someone aged 30 will not have witnessed a single one in their voting life.

More on Powell’s speech later. But her observation about the rarity of change underlines something distinctive as well as something important. Britain’s rare changes of regime make it something of an outlier. In the US, Canada and Spain over the same half century, there have been seven such changes to Britain’s three. In France and Germany, there have been five. Change is just that bit rarer in the UK, and for that reason it may in some ways be a bigger deal.

Campaign material to include pledges on NHS wait times and recruiting teachers

Keir Starmer will on Thursday unveil his version of New Labour’s pledge card for the next general election with six key commitments “put up in lights” as part of his party’s offer to swing voters.

The campaign material, which will be distributed to voters on doorsteps across England, will be revealed at an event in Essex as the Labour leader launches the party’s biggest advertising blitz since the 2019 election.

Ex-leader who still does not have party whip will not be on shortlist and is likely to run as an independent

Labour has kicked off candidate selection to run in Jeremy Corbyn’s seat of Islington North, with the contender for the seat expected to be confirmed by 1 June.

Corbyn, who is still suspended for comments he made in the aftermath of the equalities watchdog report into antisemitism in Labour, has been barred from standing again for the party. He won the seat with a majority of more than 26,000 in 2019.

Keir Starmer doesn’t even prep for PMQs any more. Rish! is sunk but can’t see he’s in self-destruct mode

The end can’t come too soon. Not just for the Tory backbenchers, but for cabinet ministers too. They sit in the Commons with resigned expressions, checking their phones for potentially lucrative job offers. No one can remember the last time Penny Mordaunt was seen with a smile on her face. Jeremy Hunt had his head down, letting his tenants know he was doubling their rent. Every penny counts.

Relax everyone. There will be plenty of sinecures to go round. But you can’t blame them for worrying. They know the game is up. Most are no longer even going through the motions of looking interested. Like a man on death row, they are just waiting for the date of their execution.

Keir Starmer appeared in Dover and Deal alongside the Labour party’s newest MP, the former Tory Natalie Elphicke, to announce the scrapping of the Rwanda deportation scheme if Labour is elected. The Guardian spoke to people in Dover to get their reaction