DAN HODGES: Why the Conservative campaign looks like it's being run by Jeremy Corbyn

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Sir Keir Starmer’s adviser was enthusiastically downbeat. ‘There will be no rabbit in our manifesto,’ he revealed. ‘We may have one or two little extra bits. But there will be no major new policy reveal. We’ll not give the Tories anything to unpick. There won’t be a single new line they can point to and say, “Aha! Look! A new spending commitment!”’

Over the past week, several political observers have begun to question Labour’s Election strategy. While the Tories have been making the running with a series of eye-catching announcements, Starmer’s safety-first campaign has looked bland and insipid.

And even before the chaotic climbdown over Diane Abbott, even some Labour MPs were starting to worry they were creating a vacuum their opponents could exploit.

It's Rishi Sunak, pictured yesterday, who is issuing a raft of reckless announcements. And in doing so,  he is helping make 2024 a change Election

‘Starmer can’t carry on like this for another five weeks,’ a Tory Minister told me. ‘Eventually he’ll have to tell the country what he’s going to do if he gets into No 10.’

He isn’t going to. Labour’s leader has no intention of doing or saying a single new, interesting or noteworthy thing between now and polling day. For one very simple reason. He thinks Rishi Sunak will win the Election for him.

Conventional wisdom has it the Tories have been setting the political weather. But Labour chiefs have been astounded by what one described to me as ‘the Tory’s very own Jeremy Corbyn strategy’.

‘It’s incredible,’ he observed. ‘They’re running a core-vote strategy that is almost identical to our 2019 campaign.

‘An ideological wish list. A series of completely uncosted spending announcements. If we did this, we’d be slaughtered.’

Rightly. The comparison with the Corbynite kamikaze dive that saw Labour offering everything in 2019 from vast NHS spending increases, through a new referendum to reverse Brexit, to the biggest raft of nationalisation since the war, is an entirely legitimate one.

Take, for example, the Tories’ policy on National Service. An attempt to inculcate a new ethos of public-spirited social engagement is one thing. But Britain in 2024 is not the Britain of 1954. And what Sunak unveiled in last week’s Mail on Sunday was something more akin to a policy edict from Soviet-era Russia.

Conscription or mandatory state service, outside a period of emergency, are not part of our national culture or conversation. And the PM’s inability to grasp that basic fact merely embedded the message he is out of touch with the country he aspires to lead.

As did his announcement on ‘Mickey Mouse’ degrees and creating 100,000 more apprentices a year by the end of the next parliament. This was unveiled with a tweet from Sunak proclaiming: ‘You don’t have to go to university to succeed in life.’

This is a noble sentiment – but not when delivered by a man who was Head Boy at Winchester, graduated with a first in PPE from Oxford, and then did an MBA at Stanford.

Labour's leader Sir Keir Starmer has no intention of doing or saying a single new, interesting or noteworthy thing between now and polling day

The solution to an epidemic of superficial degree courses is better degree courses. It’s not funnelling children from working-class backgrounds into vocational education to allow our palaces of learning to again become the preserve of a privileged elite.

The voters aren’t idiots. They know full well we aren’t going to see the sons and daughters of Conservative Cabinet Ministers signing up to be an optical assistant at Lewisham Specsavers, or a trainee chef at the Gipsy Moth pub – two of the enticing offers currently sitting on the Government’s Finding An Apprenticeship e-portal. And when they see Sunak pontificating about the school of life, they see someone who, at best, is being patronisingly paternalistic, and, at worse, an outright snob.

Yes, Starmer and his comrades obviously aren’t averse to a bit of class warfare themselves, as their assault on private schools shows. But at least they have the political nous to align themselves with the majority of the electorate when they do so.

Even the Tories’ quadruple pensions lock announcement, which was landed relatively efficiently, failed to survive the most basic scrutiny. ‘It was a great fat £2.4 billion uncosted spending commitment,’ a Shadow Minister gleefully told me. ‘They said it would be funded by cracking down on tax evasion. That’s literally the stuff John McDonnell [Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor] used to come out with. They’re trashing the last vestiges of fiscal credibility just to try to shore up their base.’

With predictable consequences.

On Thursday, former Tory Deputy Chairman Lord Ashcroft published detailed polling analysis of the campaign to date. It found the perception the Tories were setting the agenda was accurate: 65 per cent of those polled had seen a story or activity generated by the Conservatives, compared to just 54 per cent who had seen something similar from Labour. Yet the same poll gave Labour a 23-point lead, a roughly 300-seat majority.

Most damagingly, Sunak's Corbyn Strategy is warping the entire framing of the campaign. Pictured: The former Labour leader at a Gaza rally in March

The frantic blizzard of policy announcements from Sunak and his party are now actively undermining their cause. Not least because it’s allowing Labour to evade serious scrutiny by putting the spotlight on to the Tories, their own offering, and its numerous flaws.

It’s also breaking the golden rule of Tory campaigning. Labour officials had braced themselves for a ferocious assault from the vaunted Central Office attack machine.

But as Ashcroft’s polling reveals, only 6 per cent of those questioned could recall at least one negative story generated by the Conservatives targeting Labour.

And most damagingly, Sunak’s Corbyn Strategy is warping the entire framing of the campaign.

Boris Johnson won in 2019 by making it a security and continuity election.

He successfully contrasted Labour’s reckless radicalism with his own pledge to deliver an oven-ready deal, and reaffirm the 2016 decision of the British people by getting Brexit done.

By contrast, it’s Sunak who is issuing a raft of reckless announcements. And in doing so, helping make 2024 a change Election. To the benefit of one person, and one party. Again, Lord Ashcroft’s polling is clear. The single most effective message of the election to date is ‘It’s Time For Change.’ It’s author? Sir Keir Starmer.

So yes, Labour’s campaign remains a vacuum. ‘Does anyone actually know what Labour would do if they got into power?’ the Prime Minister asked last week.

To which the answer is No. But to the British people, it doesn’t matter any more.

‘Starmer can’t just sleepwalk into Downing Street,’ a Tory MP told me last week.

He can. And if the Conservative campaign continues to look like it’s being run by Jeremy Corbyn, he will.