What would a Labour landslide mean for Starmer – and for Britain?

If the latest opinion polls are correct, the general election is already in the bag for Keir Starmer. He hasn’t just got one foot in No 10 – he is so far ahead he can start measuring up the curtains.

That’s because Labour is on course to win 468 seats with the Conservatives reduced to fewer than 100, according to Survation’s new survey of more than 15,000 people. That would mean a Commons majority of nearly 300. Yes, you read that correctly – 300.

If it turns out to be right, Starmer could do almost anything he wanted. He wouldn’t have to worry about what the Labour manifesto said. He could say voters had given him carte blanche. And if they give him 468 out of the 650 MPs in Westminster, who could argue?

Yet would super-cautious Keir actually know what to do with such a massive mandate? And could it make his job of prime minister harder, not easier?

With only 125 or so ministerial jobs to hand out, the 300-plus Labour MPs left idling on the backbenches would have little to do but plot in the Commons bars and tea rooms.

Look at what happened the last time Labour won a huge majority in 1997: Tony Blair went on to win two more elections – but never by such a big margin.

And he always regretted not doing more when his authority was at its peak, first time around. He felt he spent the five years grappling with how to get anything done in Whitehall.

Starmer’s shrewd recruitment of battle-hardened ex-Whitehall fixer Sue Gray to his team was aimed at helping him avoid a similar fate.

But Blair ran into other problems, too.

For all his initial tidal wave of popularity, constant friction with his jealous Downing Street neighbour Gordon Brown – who controlled the Treasury purse strings – meant domestic reform was a hard slog.

Frustrated, Blair spent more and more time focusing on foreign affairs, where Brown couldn’t meddle. And as we know, that wasn’t altogether a success…

For now, relations between Starmer and shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves seem rock solid. But the stress of power puts even the strongest alliance under strain.

And what would an all-conquering Starmer do?

He has spent much of his leadership ditching any policy or stance that might scare the electoral horses.

He abandoned most of the expensive socialist baggage he inherited from Jeremy Corbyn and ditched his own £28bn green energy plan to combat Tory taunts of a “black hole” in his spending plans.

He has shamelessly wooed disaffected Conservatives by invoking the names of both Margaret Thatcher and Boris Johnson, praising her “entrepreneurialism” and promising to making a success of his flagship “levelling up” plan.

It is all designed to get Labour into power at almost any cost. After all, a Commons majority of one would do after the agony of being out of power for a decade and a half.

But what if the election is a walkover?

Naturally, Starmer will never talk about it in public. It would be political suicide. Taking voters for granted is one of the few things that could bring the Labour bandwagon grinding to a halt.

Labour leader Neil Kinnock seemed on the verge of election victory in 1992 and did just that days ahead of polling day, getting carried away with excitement at a Labour rally in Sheffield. It backfired disastrously and he lost.

Starmer is not so foolish to make a mistake like that.

A recurring theme in the recent biography of Starmer by Tom Baldwin is that he is a man who leaves nothing to chance and plans for every possible scenario.

As a young lawyer living in a dingy flat, Starmer was so preoccupied with reading his case notes he failed to notice the flat was being burgled.

So while not counting his chickens, it would be completely out of character for him not to be at least contemplating what he will do if the polls are accurate and he wins by a country mile.

Just don’t expect him to tell you.