Keir Starmer’s greatest asset is his reputation – but demanding an end to Covid restrictions puts that at risk

When Boris Johnson went ahead with stage four of lifting coronavirus restrictions on 19 July, Keir Starmer said it was “reckless” and “dangerous” to lift “all protections in one go”. In fact, the government kept one restriction in place, saying that even those who have been double-vaccinated would have to isolate if they came into contact with an infected person – a measure that would remain in place until 16 August.

This morning, Starmer demanded that this restriction be lifted nine days early, on 7 August, in line with the change in Wales – decided by the Labour government in Cardiff. This may seem trivially inconsistent compared with the incoherence of Johnson’s approach, but it is damaging for the Labour leader because his reputation for steadiness and competence is one of his great strengths against the wonky shopping trolley prime minister.

Starmer had a good pandemic until the vaccine cavalry came over the hill to rescue Johnson. Last year Starmer called for a circuit-breaker lockdown weeks before Johnson was forced to impose one – in a storm of petulance chronicled by Dominic Cummings, his estranged chief adviser.

The leader of the opposition always managed to place himself just on the side of the prime minister closer to public opinion. The British people have consistently been more cautious than their government about the virus, and Starmer did well to align himself with the median voter.

The majority of the public thought that the lifting of restrictions on 19 July was too early, which tempted Starmer to crank up the rhetoric against it. A new Redfield and Wilton poll published this morning confirmed that 46 per cent think it was too early, while 33 per cent say it was the right time to open up.

In which case, why should Starmer now be demanding an earlier lifting of one of the remaining restrictions? It could be to avoid taking a different line from Mark Drakeford, Labour first minister in Wales – except that Wales could argue for an earlier lifting because the level of double vaccination is higher there. Perhaps Starmer has studied all the evidence and concluded that isolating the double-vaccinated is counter-productive. I’d agree with him, but that is not the precautionary approach to infection control that he has taken up to now.

Maybe Labour’s own polling finds that people are fed up with the “pingdemic”, and that public opinion, while cautious generally, has had enough of this policy. Even so, this change does seem to send out precisely the kind of mixed message for which Labour has been successfully berating the government.

Government coronavirus policy remains a target-rich environment. The invention of the “amber plus” category for France last week is no less baffling now than when it was suddenly announced. Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, got himself in a right old muddle yesterday, claiming that the Beta variant (the one first identified in South Africa) was a problem even if it was mostly confined to the French island of Reunion in the Indian Ocean – because, he implied, it was easy to travel from there to mainland France (it isn’t). Government sources then briefed journalists that the decision was nothing to do with Reunion, but still couldn’t explain it, as the Beta variant accounts for 0.6 per cent of cases in mainland France, and falling.

As Jim McMahon, the shadow transport secretary, said today, “Ministers seem to be tying themselves in knots trying to explain this decision. If they misinterpreted the data over cases in mainland France they need to come clean and apologise.”

The current confusion over vaccine passports – which many Conservative MPs assume is simply a ruse to encourage young people to get vaccinated – ought to be mercilessly exploited by the opposition. And yet Starmer seems to have hovered between siding with the Liberal Democrats, who have rather late in the day rediscovered their civil libertarian consciences and opposed state ID cards for nightclubs, and sticking with majority public opinion, which takes an authoritarian position on forcing people to use them to help keep infections low.

All of which means that Starmer has not been able to make Johnson pay for his folly in (briefly) thinking that he could use the pilot scheme dodge as a “get out of isolation free” card. Now Starmer has in effect said that isolation for the double-vaccinated is a waste of time, he is almost admitting that it wouldn’t have mattered if the prime minister and the chancellor had avoided isolating for 10 days after their meeting with Sajid “The Ping” Javid.

Starmer’s great asset in his struggle with Johnson is his seriousness, thoroughness and competence. With this demand to ease a petty restriction nine days early, he seems to be putting that at risk.