For once, Starmer’s premiership seems energised – the task will be building this into a campaign for next year’s crucial local elections

Crises can liberate governments. Collapses in popularity, huge dilemmas about public spending, foreign policy emergencies, poll surges by opponents and the prospect of losing office: all can persuade even previously cautious administrations to change their direction and rhetoric – or simply say more clearly why they are in power.

Politicians sometimes enjoy being bolder. Commonly seen as always calculating and never spontaneous, some are in fact relieved to stop filtering their public words and finally speak their minds. At the Labour conference this week, fringe meetings were refreshingly, sometimes startlingly, full of ministers, MPs and recent government advisers talking frankly about the government’s problems and the toxicity of modern politics.

Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist