Keir Starmer began his big conference interview with the BBC talking about the story that has dominated the weekend – the Hamas attack on Israel. With Israel’s Ministry of Health suggesting at least 300 Israelis have been killed so far and the death toll of Palestinians rising, the Labour leader described the rocket fire and incursions from Gaza as an ‘appalling terrorist attack’ and said Israel had ‘every right to defend herself’. It will be a test for the new-look Labour party as to whether all MPs stay on message in the comings days in Liverpool. The party has long been divided on the Israel Palestine conflict and Starmer could face pressure to criticise aspects of the Israeli response.

As for what Starmer wants to talk about, as I previously reported he is keen to use this year’s conference – potentially the last before an election – to answer the question: If not them, why us? He tried to do so this morning by pushing the idea that a Labour government would preside over economic growth – which in turn would pay for increased spending on public services. This includes his latest plan to cut NHS waiting lists in England by funding two million more hospital appointments a year by paying staff ‘properly’ to work at weekends.

However, when pressed on how certain Starmer could be that this economic growth would come, he came into difficulty. Starmer pointed to economic growth under the last Labour government – leading Derbyshire to point out that the circumstance greeting Tony Blair when he entered No. 10 are rather different to those that the Labour leader would face if elected. As for dividing lines, Starmer when pressed confirmed that a Labour government would ditch the Tories’ Rwanda scheme even if it was operational and found to have a deterrent effect.

The final part of the interview saw Starmer put face to face with a word cloud of what voters associate the Labour leader with. This included ‘nothing’, ‘don’t know’ along with ‘people’ and ‘Labour’. It shows that he still has a long way to go to convince voters of what he stands for – other than stopping the Tories.