The downfall of the Tories may be predictable, but it can

Voters keep being warned to temper expectations. But a Labour party finally taking power should embrace that sense of opportunity, and be transformed by it

With the result by all measures a foregone conclusion, this general election campaign is less a contest and more a long coronation for one party, and an extended wake for the other. Keir Starmer is already being treated like the next prime minister rather than a leader of an opposition striving to unseat the incumbent. The Tories’ fate is only uncertain in terms of the degree of defeat: will it be serious diminishment or oblivion? In this interregnum, the future heaves into view.

The upcoming political chapter already has clear contours. Labour’s tone and policy are set. There will be no rabbits out of the hat, no crowd-pleasers, no circus shenanigans. What there will be is the long view of the management consultant – sleeves rolled up, of course – who has identified inefficiencies in the struggling business and will need a few quarters for the dividends of their work to appear on the balance sheet. With Starmer’s rejection of “tax and spend” comes a deferral to a concept of growth that relies on a lack of specificity about what can be freed up in the economy, on faith in the broad numbers you’ve been given, and on the chastened quiescence of the electorate after years of electing bad management. A way out has been identified – the tide will rise and all our boats will float up with it.