Reading the trail of Sir Keir Starmer’s speech over the weekend, and listening to it today, it was difficult to shake the notion that we were back in 2010 again.

It seemed that the speech could just as easily have come from David Cameron back in those days, which is quite obviously not a positive.

The message from Sir Keir is that things are in even worse shape than Labour “ever imagined”. He talked about things getting worse before they get better. Sir Keir also spoke about “tough” choices. He went on about Labour’s “difficult decision to mend the public finances”, and “unpopular decisions”.

The Labour leader talked about a “painful” Budget in October and having “no other choice”.

The parallels with the start of the David Cameron and George Osborne administration seemed crystal clear in the sense that the line seems to be that things are bad, are going to get worse and everyone will just have to accept that.

On the one hand, the speech was not surprising.

A bit like a new chief executive coming in to sort out a company in a mess, there is obviously the argument that, the worse you paint things, the better or least bad you can make yourself look, eventually.

We should not forget the degree to which the Conservatives hammed things up after taking over from Labour in 2010. Yes, things were in a difficult way then but that was because of a financial crisis which was global in nature.

And Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling, prime minister and chancellor respectively in that outgoing Labour government, had done a rather good job in bringing things back from the brink. They did well to stave off collapse of the UK financial sector with a shrewd plan, and moved to stimulate the economy astutely with the likes of a big cut in value-added tax.

The Conservatives quickly undid that early good work towards recovery from the global financial crisis with their ill-judged austerity, including savage cuts to welfare spending and public sector pay freezes and caps.

And, to be fair to Sir Keir, the Conservatives have made a tremendous mess of things, ever since 2010.

So you could argue that his “rubble and ruin” description of what the Tories have left, which featured in the trails of the speech but not the version delivered, is fair enough.

However, you could also argue that Sir Keir’s message is unduly negative.

The key thing to keep in mind when listening to Labour, and what seems likely to continue to be a familiar Cameron-type message of grim times and just having to get on with it from the new Government, is that Sir Keir has choices.

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Or at least he did, before he hemmed himself in.

Sir Keir is talking about things remaining tough for working people, and there is no doubt there are huge economic challenges.

However, he has tied himself in knots.

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Notably, he has decided to adopt the same fiscal constraints as those put in place by the Conservatives.

As the Institute for Fiscal Studies noted on June 4: “As we have seen, Labour has committed to the same debt rule as the Conservatives, and that rule makes no distinction between investment and day-to-day spending. It is also the rule that binds.”

After Labour published its manifesto on June 13, IFS director Paul Johnson declared: “This was not a manifesto for those looking for big numbers. The public service spending increases promised in the ‘costings’ table are tiny, going on trivial. The tax rises, beyond the inevitable reduced tax avoidance, even more trivial. The biggest commitment, to the much vaunted ‘green prosperity plan’, comes in at no more than £5 billion a year, funded in part by borrowing and in part by ‘a windfall tax on the oil and gas giants’.

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“Beyond that, almost nothing in the way of definite promises on spending despite Labour diagnosing deep-seated problems across child poverty, homelessness, higher education funding, adult social care, local government finances, pensions and much more besides. Definite promises though not to do things. Not to have debt rising at the end of the forecast. Not to increase tax on working people. Not to increase rates of income tax, national insurance, VAT or corporation tax.”

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We need to realise that the grim effects of the Tories’ protracted austerity, particularly on those on the lowest incomes, are very much continuing.

Putting more money in the pockets of those who have to spend all or the vast bulk of what they have to live, in a sensible and measured way, is as well as obviously being the right thing from a societal perspective also something that would help boost the beleaguered UK economy. It would add directly to aggregate demand.

And undertaking major investment programmes, obviously in the right areas, would also boost growth.

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Yet Sir Keir has seemed intent on boxing himself in as much as he did in the run-up to the General Election, where his strategy seemed to be to do as little as possible for fear of getting it wrong, given he was so far ahead in the polls.

Yes, Labour has done a couple of good and important things already.

Sir Keir, soon after becoming Prime Minister, declared the Conservatives’ Rwanda deportation scheme for some asylum seekers entering the UK was “dead and buried”, a very welcome move from a societal perspective and in terms of the UK’s international reputation.

Labour’s employment law reforms are also most welcome, especially given the dreadful erosion of workers’ rights under the Conservatives.

However, overall, the lack of clear blue water on policymaking between Labour and the Conservatives remains absolutely extraordinary, especially given the scale of the damage the Tories have done to the UK. And the fact that Sir Keir is making the most of this damage.

The Labour leader’s speech was portrayed as a direct message to working people, and it was staged as such.

However, the speech did not make it plain that Labour has made big choices on fiscal policy, ones which seem most like those of the Conservatives. And these deliberate choices will make things more difficult for longer.

Furthermore, it is lamentable that Labour will not level with “working people” on the fact that Brexit has caused huge damage to the UK economy, and continues to do so.

Admittedly, while it is a no-brainer from any rational economic perspective to explain the dizzying scale of this damage to the economy and living standards, it still for some reason seems a most difficult thing to do from a political perspective.

The boost to the UK economy and living standards from rejoining the European single market, if it could be achieved, would be huge.

Yet, in the world of Sir Keir, that is off the table, and so are many things because of his embracing of the fiscal constraints put in place by the economically incompetent Tories. He claimed in his speech again that Labour’s “number one priority” is economic growth – Sir Keir has a funny way of showing this.

He has made very big choices. And it is absolutely not the case there is “no choice”.

What a strange world we find ourselves in.