Follow the money and it is saying that our next government will be Labour. The betting markets think Sir Keir Starmer will enter Number 10 sometime in the next two years. The corporate world agrees. A Labour “business conference” held at Canary Wharf shortly before Christmas was sponsored by HSBC, Mastercard and SSE. Company executives did not oversubscribe for this event because they can’t get enough of canapes and were gagging to hear Sir Keir give a speech saying he wanted a partnership with business. They were there because boardrooms reckon it more than likely that they will be dealing with Labour ministers in the nearish future. A lead of around 20 points in the opinion polls has something to do with it. The idea of Labour as a government-in-waiting also owes a large debt to the Conservative party for exhibiting so many symptoms of decay. Tory MPs will greet the new year by plotting to change leader yet again or brushing up their CVs in expectation that soon they will be on the jobs market. A lot of Labour people spent the festive period pinching themselves to be sure that they were not dreaming. When Sir Keir took on the leadership after the atrocious result in 2019, the consensus in Labour’s senior ranks was that it would take at least two general elections before their party saw office again. Some I spoke to in the immediate aftermath of that crushing defeat were so despondent that they contemplated jacking it all in rather than spend another decade languishing on the opposition benches. Now they are being treated as people on the brink of power. This is delightful for Labour – and it is also dangerous. Let’s first consider the upsides of looking like winners. Politics is a confidence game. Parties that fear they are heading for defeat can turn that into a self-fulfilling prophecy by becoming terminally recriminatory, reckless, demoralised and divided. At its worst – and this is the fate that the Tories are flirting with – they collapse into a doom spiral. Parties that think they have a handsome chance of victory are much more likely to be disciplined and united. Sir Keir will appreciate the value to him of a poll lead because he has felt the agony of being behind. Eighteen months ago, his party trailed the Tories by 10 points and he endured what one friend calls a “near-death experience” when Labour crashed to a humiliating defeat at the Hartlepool byelection. A chorus of people, ranging from continuity Corbynistas to New Labour veterans, asked whether he had the stuff of leadership – and there was a swelling rumble that he did not. Sir Keir is still beset by complaints that he is bland, boring, over managerial and too risk-averse. That criticism will not go away given that oratorical pyrotechnics, sizzling zingers and dazzling showmanship are not his forte. But the polls arm him with a riposte to his critics. There’s nothing dull about a double-digit lead. An opposition that appears to be on its way to government gets another bonus. That is attention. A lot of the struggle of opposition politics is persuading people that it is worth listening to what you have to say. Labour frontbenchers are now attracting increased interest and they should expect more of it in 2023. The shadow cabinet had become so accustomed to being largely ignored that they were taken by surprise by the explosion of debate around the proposal to remove the tax privileges of private schools. This was not even a new idea, but one pre-dating Sir Keir’s leadership. It got attention, both supportive and otherwise, because a lot more people now think a Labour government is a serious prospect. To profitably exploit this change, the party needs to put lots of fizz and maximum oomph into promoting those policies that are positive, distinctive and speak to a lot of constituencies, such as the “green prosperity plan” to have all the UK’s electricity supplied by clean energy by 2030. More attention also means an intensification of scrutiny, especially from those with hostile intent towards the party. Over the next 12 months, Labour people will have to be ultra-careful that every position they take and promise they make is fireproofed against attack by the Tories and their allies in the rightwing media. Any ticking timebombs need to be defused before their opponents become aware of them. A poll lead can be a liability as well as an asset. It will be a big mistake for Labour people to start behaving as if they are on an easy cruise to victory. Sir Keir himself is worried about this. He tells his team that they should act as if they are five points behind and with everything still to fight for. One member of the shadow cabinet reports: “He is always lecturing everyone about complacency.” Some in Labour’s ranks would have the leadership team respond to the poll lead by being more “ambitious”, “transformative” and “radical”. What is often meant by this is that Labour should promise to spend a lot more on public services and welfare than the Conservatives. Sir Keir and the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, are not averse to saying that they would spend differently to the Tories. Labour is pledged to scrap non-dom status and use the proceeds to train more doctors, nurses and health visitors. That is intended to send a message about the priorities of a Starmer government and signal whose side it would be on. What Sir Keir and Ms Reeves are refusing to pledge is more spending overall than the Conservatives. There is realism among some of the trade unions about the constraints on Labour’s leadership. The new head of the TUC, Paul Nowak, acknowledges that a Labour government will not be able to “turn the taps on from day one”. Labour presenting itself as “the party of fiscal responsibility” sounds enervatingly orthodox to critics on the left, but this approach has the merit of recognising that Labour never wins an election without first persuading mainstream voters that the party can be trusted with the nation’s finances. The Tories can make a howling mess of things and still hang on to power if the public has even less faith in Labour. That is the lesson of two of the party’s most shocking election defeats. Everyone who matters in the Labour hierarchy is haunted by the memory that Neil Kinnock was beaten by John Major in 1992 despite a Tory recession, and Ed Miliband lost to David Cameron in 2015 after five years of Conservative austerity. Despite all the Tory-generated mayhem and misery of the past 12 months, voters are pretty evenly divided when asked to say which party they most trust to grow the economy. As a further warning against any Labour hubris, it is also close between Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir when the public is asked who is the better person to be prime minister. He has expressed a reverence for the past leaders whom he calls Labour’s “winners”, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair. That Labour has only produced three winners in more than a century of the party’s existence is another reason not to take anything for granted. A compelling vision of a better Britain was key to the party’s successes in 1945, 1964 and 1997. As one former cabinet minister puts it: “Labour wins when it owns the future.” I am unconvinced, as are a lot of the shadow cabinet, that they have achieved that yet. The most persuasive interpretation of the polls is that they are more an expression of public disgust with the way the Tories are misgoverning than enthusiasm for the alternative offered by Sir Keir’s team. When voters are invited to give an opinion about the rival parties, most of them are now asking themselves: who is responsible for this awful shitshow? The polls are essentially a referendum on the government and it is not surprising that the Tories have a dismal vote share when they are presiding over recession, rising taxes and borrowing costs, strikes by essential workers and crumbling public services. Not that many voters are currently asking themselves: what do I really think about the prospect of a Labour government? Talk to the shrewder sort of Tory or Labour MP and you will find agreement that Sir Keir’s party has yet to “seal the deal” with a lot of the public. Labour can smell power, but it shouldn’t inhale too deeply. While a big poll lead is to be preferred to the opposite, the only votes that ultimately count are the ones in ballot boxes. The Labour leader is absolutely right to think that his worst enemy is complacency. Andrew Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer