In a packed school assembly hall in an inner London comprehensive on a balmy evening last week, the great and good of the Labour party gathered to celebrate the launch of the memoir of the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting.
The party’s general secretary, David Evans, mingled over glasses of wine and bowls of crisps with Peter Hyman, Keir Starmer’s senior aide, Deborah Mattinson, Labour’s director of strategy, and a host of other Labour MPs, political journalists and party officials.
Streeting joked to the crowded room at Westminster City school, his old sixth form, that autobiographies were usually written at the end of careers. The impatient atmosphere in the room, however, suggested he and shadow cabinet colleagues may well be at the start of theirs.
For the last few months, Conservative opinion poll rankings have been heading downwards, with support falling to its lowest level in more than four months last week as voters appeared to penalise Rishi Sunak and his government for inflation and interest rate rises.
The prime minister’s small boats plan is snarled up in the courts and his own MPs are engaged in daily bouts of blue on blue, while just offstage Boris Johnson hovers, causing ripples of anxiety for those Tories who still believe they have a chance at the election.
Yet those at the top of the Labour party are taking nothing for granted. While they recognise that they are likely, at the very least, to be the biggest party after polling day, Starmer’s team remain nervous. “There is absolutely no room for complacency,” one senior adviser scolds. “We still have a long way to go”.
Some Labour MPs worry they are on course to win on the back of votes against the Tories, rather than for Labour. There are, of course, others that don’t care as long as they get to No 10. But a decent majority and a second term are unlikely to follow unless they get the right balance between economic reality and inspiration.
Party strategists believe they face two main challenges over the next year and a bit to persuade the country that they can offer both economic certainty – or “securonomics” as they like to call it – and a brighter future.
One is that after years of over-promising but underdelivering on things like levelling up and Brexit, the public is sceptical of promises from politicians from right across the political spectrum. “They’re all the same,” is one regular refrain in focus groups.
The other is that the economic picture means there’s little money for big spending commitments – even if they wanted to make them – so Labour wouldn’t be able to ride to the rescue of cash-starved public services. That’s a difficult message to sell to voters.
Not a day seems to go by without Labour dropping – or delaying – a policy pledge. The £28bn green jobs fund, scrapping tuition fees and raising taxes for the top 5% of earners have all been affected. Party officials point out the country is in a different place after the pandemic, Ukraine, Trussonomics and the cost of living crisis.
Yet it is a vulnerability, building on Johnson’s joke about Starmer having “more flip-flops than Bournemouth beach”. At PMQs last week, Sunak attacked the Labour leader for “never actually keeping a promise he’s made”. It has also angered many of those who backed him to be leader in the first place, with the leftwing Momentum group accusing Labour of being “allergic” to good policy.
Senior Labour figures, however, are more concerned about whether voters know what Starmer does stand for – rather than what he does not. One shadow cabinet minister admits there is still a “central tension” over how he is defined, despite four of his five policy “missions” already being published. “He has to stand for something,” they say. “But the public still struggle to put their finger on what that is”.
Officials close to Starmer believe the sceptics – internal and otherwise – will be proved wrong. They describe the missions, which broadly cover the economy, environment, NHS, crime and education, as the “ladder” to what he would deliver in government.
They will form the basis of what Labour will provide to Whitehall departments and key stakeholders as a template for government should it win the election. “It’s about how we deliver, as well as what,” says one senior aide.
They will also, along with ideas agreed by the party’s national policy forum later this month, feed into the election manifesto machine, which will pull together the most eye-catching “retail” offers. Some of these will be announced at the autumn conference, with the rest held back until nearer polling day.
Starmer’s allies insist that he is a problem solver, rather than a technocrat, and will take the tough decisions needed to deliver. “We know we’ve still got work to do, but we have a plan for the next year. Everybody just has to be patient,” said one adviser.
Yet, as the restlessness at Streeting’s book launch last week showed, few in the Labour party or across its support base more broadly are willing to heed that advice. Questions over Starmer’s strategy will continue right up until the moment election day brings its answer.
