There’s a new rule for members of Keir Starmer’s team on their WhatsApp group: no messages linking to opinion polls. It’s not because the Labour leader dislikes the figures. Labour polls consistently on about 45 per cent and the Tories on 25 per cent, which is landslide victory territory. The fear is that too much focus on such numbers will breed complacency. ‘We are a party scarred by its losses,’ says a member of Starmer’s office.

Yet with the election expected next year, Labour and Tory MPs are talking less about whether Rishi Sunak can turn things around and more about the scale of Starmer’s victory. Will Labour have a majority of 20 or 200? It’s rare to find any MP, on any bench, who believes the Tories will win a fifth term.

Before he was whisked into No. 10 to become political secretary to the Prime Minister, James Forsyth warned in this column about a perfect storm gathering for the Tories this winter. Rampant inflation, recession, strikes, a losing battle on immigration, and a health service that could fall down at any moment (if it has not started to do so already). This would be a huge challenge for any party in power, let alone one already struggling to hold on to its support base.

When Sunak entered No. 10 he promised to provide ‘stability’ after the Liz Truss drama, but some Tories are already complaining that his team is too timid. Neither Sunak nor Starmer has yet managed to convey to the public what exactly they stand for. Both intend to start the new year by correcting that with speeches this week.

Starmer’s team feel they have announced plenty of policy ideas (charge VAT on school fees, abolish non-dom status), but there still needs to be a more general sense of what Labour would do differently. Starmer wants to talk about long-term solutions and professionalism, while blaming today’s ills on Tory short-termism and psychodrama.

There are shadow cabinet members who want Starmer to show more radicalism, but others argue this is not the time to go out on a limb, pointing out that Tony Blair was accused of being lightweight and went on to win three majorities. Peter Mandelson, positioning himself as the party’s éminence grise, has said Starmer should not focus too much on green issues and become a ‘British version of the environmental activist Greta Thunberg’. His comment is being interpreted in Labour circles as a warning to watch out for Ed Miliband, the shadow climate and net-zero secretary.

The Red Wall is the obvious battleground for the next election. One Downing Street aide describes support for Starmer in the northern English seats as ‘incredibly soft’. The Tory strategy will be to draw attention to the past comments of Labour MPs and shadow cabinet members. ‘While Angela Rayner is in the shadow cabinet, we have hope,’ claims one government aide – arguing that Labour’s (directly elected) deputy leader is a gift to the Tories that will keep on giving. She previously had to apologise ‘unreservedly’ for calling Conservatives ‘scum’.

Sunak wants to focus on five priorities for his premiership. The first will be to halve inflation. This battle might already be on course for victory, albeit slowly. The Bank of England expects CPI inflation to halve to 5 per cent over the course of this year and hit 1 per cent by May 2024, a potential election date. By focusing on inflation now, the Tories can seek to take credit as it falls. Sunak will also pledge to reduce debt and grow the economy.

The Prime Minister’s next priority is the small boats crisis. No. 10 aides are also working on ways of demonstrating progress in asylum backlogs. More than 150,000 people were awaiting processing at the last count. There is hope within government that, after the High Court ruling that the Rwanda scheme was lawful, the first flight carrying asylum seekers could take off in the coming months. Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, has said this would be her ‘dream’. But Sunak is determined not to make any pledges that may later be broken (which he saw as a flaw of Boris Johnson). His preference is to under-promise and over-deliver.

Next, Sunak wants to cut NHS waiting lists. He spent much of Christmas speaking to his friends and family who work in the health sector to try to get a better perspective on where things can be improved. Yet the challenge is so great: NHS hospitals are busier than at the height of the Covid pandemic and 410,000 people have spent more than a year on a waiting list. It’s hard to see any short-term wins. One quick fix could be to pay for more patients to be treated privately, but that would be a hard political sell.

Before Sunak can get to these priorities, though, he first needs to show authority on strikes. He has so far held his nerve and refused to reopen any pay offers. Although a handful of Tory MPs have called for a more generous offer for nurses, polling for Conservative-Home suggests Sunak is in line with his party’s grassroots members – seven in ten support the government’s position. If he were to wobble now, his supporters worry his authority would be weakened more generally. His backbenchers would conclude that if they push hard enough on any issue he will change course.

Plans are under way for laws to give the public more protection, bringing in minimum service levels (for example, 20 per cent of rail services during strike action) and possibly raising thresholds for strikes. Currently, strikes are allowed if 50 per cent of union members turn out to vote; or for ‘important public services’ such as health, if 40 per cent of all those entitled to vote approve the action. Sunak is considering increasing this threshold so 50 per cent of all eligible members must approve a strike for it to be lawful. But any new law may be held up in parliament until summer.

Sunak’s allies have always said he’s a man defined more by action than words, but he doesn’t have much time to prove himself. Already almost half of the electorate say they would vote Labour if an election were held tomorrow. Both Sunak and Starmer are in a race to define themselves, but only one of them really needs things to change.