Asked why Starmer hadn’t spoken out while he was on the front bench, Falconer said: "He has on anti-Semitism. Anyhow, a lawyer can’t say 'fuck, my client — the Labour leadership — is awful,' but that is how it’s been for the last three years.”

Starmer lavished praise on Corbyn in his speech to members in Blackburn. “There is the most intense media pressure on all politicians, and it’s intense in particular on the leader of the Labour party,” he said. “And we’ve just seen Jeremy Corbyn vilified not just in this election campaign but in all of the years he was leader.”

“They’ll go for you too!” one man shouted from his seat. Starmer said he, like many others, had been told by voters that they couldn’t back Corbyn — but he insisted their views had been tainted by inaccurate media portrayals.

“It’s not just Jeremy; it was Ed Miliband too. It’s wrong, it does affect things, and we do need to do something about it,” he told the audience. “If you lose elections, there’s nothing you can do about that.”

He did not elaborate on what exactly he would do in government to restrain the media in this way. But underlining this apparent call for further state intervention, Starmer also pointed to the “falsehoods put out by the Conservative party in this election, sometimes amplified by the press”, saying: “There’s an urgent need to look at how that all operates.”

Just six days later, Starmer launched a rallying cry for press freedom after a number of political journalists were turned away from a briefing in Downing Street. After the incident sparked outrage on social media, Starmer released a public statement, calling on the cabinet secretary to investigate Number 10 and declaring: “Banning sections of the media from attending important briefings about important matters of government is damaging to democracy.”

Starmer’s critics within the party told us these contrasting views of the press reflected his tendency to “flip-flop” and say different things depending on the audience he was speaking to at the time. “He’s always triangulating rather than putting out a coherent message,” one said. “That’s because he has no real politics.”

The reality is that hedging his bets and playing to both the left and the right of the party could be his best chance of winning this contest. He points to his campaign team as proof he is serious about uniting the warring factions. Jenny Chapman, a former MP who was vice-chair of Blairite pressure group Progress, is his campaign chair; Simon Fletcher, ex–chief of staff to Corbyn, is strategic campaign adviser; Kat Fletcher, who also worked on Corbyn’s 2015 leadership campaign, is director of field; and Morgan McSweeney, who ran Liz Kendall’s doomed leadership bid, is campaign manager.

Behind the scenes, some Labour MPs bemoan Starmer’s “safe” campaign — just as Johnson relied on a drama-free campaign during the election to get him over the line — and hope he will show a firmer sense of his political vision, and more personality, if he becomes leader on April 4.