With his robot shtick, Starmer is campaigning in prose. But

Steady caution has brought Labour to the brink of power. In office, something very different will be required

No drama Starmer. No surprises at Thursday’s manifesto launch, no rabbits, no hats. Some in the audience are getting restless. Reporters yawn, or laugh, when the Labour leader says, for the millionth time, that his father was a toolmaker who worked in a factory. A voter at Wednesday’s Sky News debate told him to his face that he was a “political robot”. The complaint is not only about style, but substance too. Opponents on the right lambast the lack of plans and policy detail; on the left they condemn the timidity, the dearth of radical ambition.

Those complaints all miss the same point. Starmer’s boringness is not a bug: it’s a feature. Those puzzled by Labour’s giant poll lead – thinking it odd that Starmer is ahead despite being so unexciting – fail to realise that Starmer is ahead because he is unexciting. There is method to his lack of madness. To be sure, the caution, the silences on whole areas of policy, may exact a price further down the road – we’ll come to that – but for now, it’s working.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist