Labour’s lead in the polls increased last week after it was announced that Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak had been issued with fixed penalty notices in connection with Downing Street parties. This is good news for Keir Starmer, yes? Well, the answer is far more complicated.

Even if Labour wins the next general election, few expect the scale of the political earthquake that produced the 1997 result: a Commons majority of 180 for the new Labour government, with Conservative representation dropping by almost exactly 50 per cent.

Given that Scotland is likely to remain stubbornly immune to Labour’s charms for at least another general election, the best that Starmer can hope for is a wafer-thin overall majority. But he would settle for leading the largest party in a hung parliament, and even that outcome is hardly guaranteed by the polls, two years away from polling day.

In other words, at a time of unprecedented criticism of the incumbent prime minister, as Britain chalks up meagre levels of economic growth compared to our main competitors, and as ordinary Britons struggle under the weight of inflation, historically high personal taxation and eye-watering home energy prices, Labour still haven’t sealed the deal with the voters.

So while the fluctuation of Labour’s polling lead, in line with domestic events, is good news for Labour, there is something still missing from the equation, namely a structural polling advantage not subject to the weekly ups and downs of party fortunes. This is something that all opposition parties require if they are to be confident of replacing their opponents in government.

The two main factors working against the party developing that sort of structural advantage are its own leader and the Prime Minister.

Starmer has done everything the party needed him to do when he was first chosen to navigate Labour out of the blind alley into which his predecessor had guided it during five tortuous, misspent years. He has (more or less) restored Labour’s reputation as a party that will no longer tolerate anti-Jewish racism. He has robustly dealt with backbenchers who were sceptical about the Nato alliance, thereby establishing in voters’ minds that Jeremy Corbyn’s naive (or cynical – take your pick) sympathies for anti-West rhetoric was an aberration, not a rule. And he has brought more discipline to the frontbench’s economic approach, rightly fearing Conservative attacks on a costly and spendthrift Labour spending programme.

He has even managed to draw something of a line under his own party’s (and, if truth be told, his own) mendacious manoeuvrings over Brexit in the run-up to the 2019 general election, insisting repeatedly that “there is no case” for Britain rejoining the EU.

Yet there is something missing from Starmer’s broad appeal to the electorate. A couple of weeks ago, the polls showed a Labour lead of between four and six points – not nearly enough of a cushion on which to glide into a fierce election campaign and be sure of victory. The day-to-day fluctuation caused by the dramatic goings on in Downing Street aren’t enough yet to change that. So why is Starmer still not cutting through?

Brexit is certainly part of it, though we can expect that factor to diminish in the next two years. The culture wars have so far been unkind to the Labour leader too, though in recent weeks he and fellow frontbenchers have risked the ire of trans activists by conceding that biological sex matters. A “concession” that looks bizarre in any historical context, but this is 2022, remember. 

But Starmer’s central problem – and it is one about which he can do little and which is, to be fair, not his fault – is intrinsically wrapped up in the appeal that Boris Johnson has for the electorate. It is that thing called authenticity. 

Starmer still comes across as a career politician: too measured (even his occasional bouts of passion in the Commons look rehearsed and gauged), too on-message, too aware and controlling of his public image. In many ways, these are not bad traits: the shadow of Michael Foot’s leadership from 1980 to 1983 – when “PR” meant electoral reform and not much else, and “slick” and “glossy” were used as pejorative terms – lies long and heavy on the party.

But Starmer still fails the “pint” test. When an American focus group during the presidential election in 2000 was asked who would make the best president, the participants answered “Al Gore”. When they were asked who they would prefer to have a drink in a bar with, they answered “George W. Bush”. When they were asked who they would vote for, they answered “George W. Bush.”

Boris Johnson remains in the dog house for now. He may never be allowed back out. But in an age that is jaundiced about politicians and their subservience to the party line, Johnson still retains that knack – infuriating though it is to his many detractors – of making people smile.

Starmer can’t match that ability, and to be fair, he shouldn’t have to. The qualifications for the job of prime minister go well beyond encouraging voters to join in the joke. Tony Blair won the electorate’s confidence without having to get stuck on a zipwire or burst regularly into ancient Greek on command.

But Blair also had authenticity: he sounded as much like a normal person as politicians were able to 25 years ago. Starmer’s cautious, hesitant, rehearsed recital of his latest political attack does not instill in anyone the belief that his convictions come from the heart.  Instead, he looks and sounds like someone who, having pursued a very successful first career in the law, has now decided that for the next phase of his life, he wants to give being prime minister a go.

Who knows? Maybe he’ll be given the chance. But perhaps what Labour needs right now, irrespective of Boris Johnson’s troubles, is a leader who inspires, not just a leader who will do.