With time to kill before Keir Starmer’s first speech to conference as Prime Minister, I had a browse through some other landmark addresses. As you do.

The first was stuffed with fancy words and phrases like “New Britain” and “compassion with a hard edge”.

The next was a gloomier affair, warning of “spending cuts” and “severe consequences”.

Okay, speech pickers, can you identify the addresses in question? The first is Tony Blair in Brighton, 1997, when he was in the same position Starmer is now, fresh from a landslide victory. The second is George Osborne delivering his emergency budget of June 2010, the one introducing austerity.

Both speakers talked about hard choices. “You can have the education revolution, the health revolution, the welfare revolution. But it means hard choices,” said Blair. “I am not going to hide hard choices from the British people,” declared Osborne. But not even Osborne was as gloomy as Keir Starmer in Liverpool today. From the new Prime Minister, we heard about “tough decisions”, that change will be “hard”, a difficult road lies ahead, there are no easy answers, no false hope, we can’t turn back, and there will be trade-offs.

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If this was the much-trailed diversion from the depths of gloom to the sunlit uplands it left much to be desired. As for Starmer’s train heading towards a light at the end of the tunnel, I think I’d rather take my chances on the Nightsleeper.

In any leader’s speech the build-up and post-match analysis are as important, if not more so, than the address itself. So Pat McFadden, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, was to be found this morning trying to whip up interest in the speech of a premier not exactly known for his verbal fireworks.

“It’s a really big moment where the Prime Minister can set out his agenda for the future, which in the end will affect people’s lives much more than any rows in Downing Street or any of the stories that have been in the newspapers the last couple of weeks,” he said on BBC Breakfast.

Ah, the stories. The ones about freebies and in-fighting. These were dismissed by McFadden, with his trademark seen it all before tone, as a “squall” the Government would work through.

Yet the fact that Starmer and his ministers are hitting stormy weather so soon should concern ministers. It has certainly cut through with the public, sending the poll ratings of the Labour leader spiralling downwards.

Starmer should have been as brimming with confidence in Liverpool as Blair was in Brighton. Different centuries, very different leaders, but the essentials were the same. This was a moment that was never going to come around again, a chance to strike out in a different direction, start a new trail of footprints.

Tony BlairTony Blair (Image: Newsquest Media Group)In Blair’s speech you can sense a boundless spirit of optimism. Everything is ahead of him, including the shame and the failure, but for now he is golden. He is looking forward, doing the vision thing, and taking the audience with him.

Starmer, in contrast, kept looking downwards or into the middle distance. His talk of the future was laden with ifs and buts and no guarantees. Time and again the only thing he was keen to promise was that things would be managed better under his government.

Blair’s speech is worth seeking out if only for the comedy value. One forgets what an old ham he was. Here he is describing how the drive from his home to Buckingham Palace the day after the election. “People watching our journey on TV came pouring out of the doorways, waving and shouting and clapping, with an energy and excitement that went beyond anything I imagined would happen. They were liberated," said the de Gaulle of Downing Street.

Blair might have been missing a sense of his own ridiculousness, but what he did have was a long list of things the Government had delivered on in its first months, including devolution referendums in Scotland and Wales.

Starmer had a hard time pointing to his achievements. Understandable, perhaps, since he has only been in office since July. All the more reason to fill the gaps with policy announcements, but there were precious few of these. This was his chance to tell a different story. In not seizing it he has guaranteed that his first months will be forever remembered for riots and rows over freebies.

Starmer wants to be seen as a change-maker, the politician who does politics differently. He spoke about it in the campaign, on entering Downing Street, and he returned to it today. “I know this country is exhausted by and with politics. I know that the cost of living crisis drew a veil over the joy and wonder in our lives and that people want respite and relief and may even have voted Labour for that reason.”

It is a bizarre thing for anyone to say, far less a politician. If politics is about choice, the preference for one thing over another, then people want more of it, not less. How else can life improve?

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Starmer’s problems stem from his government making the wrong choices. They chose to means test the winter fuel payment for pensioners. The Prime Minister and others chose to accept gifts, and enjoy a lifestyle beyond anything an ordinary person could afford.

People don’t need less politics, they just need Starmer and his government to be better at politics. Faster, more creative, busier, with a shedload more foresight. In short, be more Blair, the 1997 version, not the older model.

It is telling in Blair’s speech that he issues three warnings about complacency. In the first he reminds the party that it has never won two full consecutive terms in government (a fact he would change). In the second he says of the Tories: “They are not dead. Just sleeping.” And the third: “What the people give the people can take away.” Each one of those warnings applies to this Labour government, and Scottish Labour in particular.

In one of the strongest sections of his speech, the Prime Minister spoke of the importance of joy in people’s lives. He is right, but they need inspiration too. All Sir Keir is offering so far is dull managerialism. More of the same, but with a tweak here and there and without Tory nastiness. It is a vision, but it is not much of one.

Alison Rowat is a senior politics and features writer on The Herald. Contact alison.rowat@heraldandtimes.co.uk