The party has to go on attack and take argument direct to Conservatives’ doorstep

Can Labour come back from here? There are 16 days to go, a Conservative leader has been to Wrexham again, and the average of the five weekend polls look roughly as bad as they did for Jeremy Corbyn at this stage in 2017.

Labour now sits at 30%, 13 points behind the Conservatives on an election-winning 43%. At this point in the last election Theresa May’s lead was 11 points, although the cracks were already appearing in her campaign.

Then, the Tory manifesto collapsed into a row about the “dementia tax” and the then prime minister was forced to retreat in Wrexham, declaring “nothing has changed”. This time, Boris Johnson chose to pose crouching alongside a sheep.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Boris Johnson poses with some sheep. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

So far, the Conservatives have been relatively fortunate: the party has gained eight points since the start of the campaign – to Labour’s five – helped almost entirely by Nigel Farage’s decision to pull out of Tory seats. That suggests that the Tory vote could be at its peak, given that Johnson is so unpopular with remain supporters.

Labour also needs to improve less than the headline data might suggest. If the Conservative lead dips below six or seven points then that could be enough to deprive Johnson of the 326-plus seat overall majority he craves, according to experts such as political scientist John Curtice of Strathclyde University.

To achieve that, Labour has plenty to do. It first needs to hang on to the combination of voters that brought it to 40% at the last general election: the young voters who helped it win seats like Canterbury and Warwick and Leamington, retain Cambridge, and who it needs to win hyper-marginal Southampton Itchen.

Labour also needs to shore up its base of traditional voters in “red wall” seats ranging from Wrexham and elsewhere in north Wales, through to the West and east Midlands at a time when party insiders are jittery. Here, perhaps, some of Labour manifesto policies will help.

Taxing those earning over £80,000 a year more is supported by 81%, according to Deltapoll, who conducted fieldwork after last Thursday’s launch, making it one of the party’s most popular policies. Scrapping university tuition fees and providing free education for life is supported by 57% and renationalising rail by 51%.

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Even Labour’s renegotiate-and-vote-again Brexit policy may be more popular than the heavy attack on it by the Conservatives might suggest: with Deltapoll suggesting it is liked by 42% and opposed by 36%.

Labour also has to further squeeze the Liberal Democrats, currently polling at 15%, who are still well ahead of their 7.4% finish in 2017. With the Lib Dems finally focusing their attacks on Johnson, Corbyn’s party has a chance to ram home the message that seats won in 2017 like Kensington in London will be vulnerable if the anti-Tory vote is split.

Ultimately, though, Labour has to take the argument direct to the Conservatives, and neutralise some of Corbyn’s relative unpopularity to the prime minister. Here, the party is helped by the fact that in a week’s time Donald Trump arrives in London for the two-day Nato summit.

That gives Labour a fortuitous opportunity to present an image of Britain under a Johnson government, in thrall to an erratic and unpopular US president and its chlorinated chicken-led trade policy.

Labour also needs to find a way to highlight Johnson’s biggest weakness: trust. It is the issue that the party’s candidates say recurs on the doorstep, linked as it is to the complicated personal life that lingers, unsaid, in voter’s minds.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protesters wearing masks of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson gather outside the Houses of Parliament. Photograph: Wiktor Szymanowicz/Barcroft Media

Corbyn was notably reluctant to stray into that territory during the first leader’s debate on ITV, although the audience laughed at the prime minister, but has another chance to do so in the BBC head-to-head on 6 December, if he can find the appropriate language.

In the interim, Labour has to try and highlight holes in Conservative promises. It has started by demonstrating that Johnson’s pledge to recruit 50,000 more nurses is an exaggeration, but it is also the case that the promise to resolve the social care crisis is just a vague statement of aspiration and talk of tax cuts has been exaggerated.

As for Brexit, not only is no deal at the end of the transition period not ruled out but the coming months of negotiations about a free trade deal suggest that the issue will not be done but instead dominate throughout 2020. With the Conservatives pursuing a risk-averse, sheep-first policy, Labour has to attack.