Keir Starmer and Ed Davey lead two different parties but face the same question: can the UK centre hold?

Despite such differences in style, the two leaders are more similar than they might seem. They met privately for dinner at the home of a mutual friend in the legal profession a couple of years ago, and by all accounts got on well enough to establish a level of respect for each other’s motives. The prime minister says that Davey “seems pretty straightforward” while the Lib Dem leader in turn says Starmer appears to be “a decent guy”. They share a background of having cared for their chronically sick mothers and are now middle-aged family men who appear to wear the “Sir” prefixed to their names with suitably self-effacing awkwardness. And both became leaders in 2020, when their respective parties were at a low ebb, before steering them back to historic highs with a route that, in England, almost entirely cut through Tory-held seats.