Starmer should be confident about entering No 10. It’s what he does next that will define him | Owen Jones

The Labour leader has finally hitched himself to some bold policies. But can he be trusted to come good on them?

When Keir Starmer assumed the Labour leadership two years ago, both the party's left and right flanks feared that they were heading for a repeat of the Ed Miliband era. For the left, this meant a lack of a radical alternative to Tory rule; the right, meanwhile, was worried he would engage in a heretical repudiation of Blairite nostrums. Miliband's tortured tenure as leader of the opposition reflected his own internal conflict between the radicalism of his Marxist father and his background as a New Labour adviser: his flirtation with an analysis of a broken economic system was not matched by the transformative policies required to fix it.

How appropriate, then, that it is Miliband himself - who concluded that his lack of boldness fatally undermined his own leadership - who has played a pivotal role in arming Starmer's Labour with substantial policies. His influence could be seen in the party's commitment to invest 28bn a year in a transition to a green economy, and to slash energy bills through the introduction of a windfall tax on fossil fuel profits. In Starmer's conference speech, it manifested itself again: in the creation of a publicly run energy company that will own and operate renewable energy assets, and a sovereign wealth fund. Thanks to the determination of Labour's transport secretary Louise Haigh, the party is officially committed to rail nationalisation, while her colleague Lisa Nandy has adopted a mantra of council housing, council housing, council housing".