Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, has evidently done a lot of thinking over the summer. Von der Leyen did not hesitate to talk about values, and to say things as she sees them: “Our democracy is under attack.” Poverty elimination is a matter of “basic social justice”. It is not that Starmer would necessarily disagree with most of what von der Leyen had to say. Starmer supporters might argue that von der Leyen has it easy: the EU is a much bigger beast than post-Brexit Britain, which cannot ignore its economic and technological dependencies on America. He needs to tear up whatever leader’s speech is currently being developed, with its predictable bureaucratic themes of “delivery”, “economic stability” and (yet again) “kick-starting growth”, and take a leaf out of von der Leyen’s book.