This is already a strange Labour conference on the Mersey. Not just because Liverpool is being lashed day after day by unseasonable volumes of rain, but because the Labour Party can always find a reason not to be cheerful.
The first Labour conference with actual Labour government ministers on the platform since 2009, the first opportunity to do and not just say for 15 years – and yet somehow it would start under a pall, wouldn’t it?
A pall from a poll indeed, showing the Prime Minister and his government have suffered a cliff-edge drop in their personal ratings in only three months. Political aides, ministers and MPs mutter about political incompetence since the election, a series of political and policy misjudgments which have already spawned this administration’s first “-gate”, with the ignominy of the Prime Minister having to rule out further personal donations to cover the cost of his suits and eyewear.
It’s easy in these situations for politicos and journalists alike to blame poor communications and indeed, the Government’s response when challenged by the press has been poor. We’re left with politicians from the Prime Minister down having to defend the position that there was nothing wrong with accepting personal donations to cover clothing, holidays, birthday parties and the like, but largely speaking they wouldn’t be doing it any more – not because it was wrong, but because people keep talking about it.
Oh, and by the way, they say, it was all within the rules. Remind you of anything? One half-expects Keir Starmer to be ambushed by a cake at any moment.
One MP told me he could not think of a story and response which would better play into the hands of Nigel Farage, whose party is second in over 90 Labour seats: they really are all the same, he’ll tell voters, who barely had any trust in anyone to begin with.
But crisis comms only occur because there’s been a crisis to begin with, and crisis is born from misjudgments, which were Starmer’s. He accepted the donations having set such a store by probity in opposition, and short of achieving a first in politics and forming a government of secular saints, it was inevitable he would pay a price for it later.
This misjudgment, which might have been embarrassing, has become more serious because it has fused with a policy problem. Choosing to remove the winter fuel allowance in the absence of a wider budget means that in the minds of many voters, taking away old folks’ money to help pay their gas bills is the only thing they may have noticed the Labour government has done.
It has led to the unanswerable question to every Labour minister on every broadcast round: if the PM, with his means, felt he couldn’t afford his own suits, how do they expect a pensioner with next to none to pay for their crippling energy costs?
There were better ways that this could have been handled, but the Government will weather it. This is the first Labour administration born in the second by second media cycle, with the X vultures picking every news event clean within seconds, demanding new narratives and events to consume.
None of that is easy for a party getting to grips with governing. But No 10, to some extent, allowed the birds to go unfed. After a first week in office, full of announcements and activity, the agenda quickly evaporated over the summer recess, especially having been pushed off course by the riots.
That is not to say that ministers weren’t busily getting on with their new briefs, pursuing earnest and important work, but the Government didn’t tell much of a story about any of it. The “grid” was modest. There was no summer budget, which was a mistake, not only because it meant winter fuel was viewed in isolation, but in that it allowed the Government’s early momentum to dissipate.
Stories which would normally have come and gone loomed larger, filling the void. With the Government saying little about itself, it allowed others, former Conservative operatives in particular, to say something about them instead, to define what should have been their political salad days.
With a nimbler operation, this too can be fixed, so long as the biggest question is answered: what is this government actually about?
Because to fill a grid, to communicate your message, you have to have one. And ministers worry that beyond not being the Tories, beyond a vague sense of renewal, this government doesn’t.
Looked at this way, the insistence on saying things will get worse because of the Tories isn’t merely politically convenient; it is essential, because the Government hasn’t worked out what to say about itself. Remember that a new government is often formed of an intellectual project in opposition.
That has not been the case with Starmer. There is no sense of Starmerism, no big idea, no grand project. Indeed, Starmer himself has embraced this, saying that he is suspicious of grand, sweeping programmatic ideology, feeling that voters prefer the quiet dignity of realistic, tangible hope and change.
That might be fine, but it means Starmer runs the risk of rudderlessness when the seas get rough. That rudderlessness has already taken hold and lingers over this conference. Labour has its five missions, but they’re diffuse, difficult to remember, and don’t seem to much cohere, much less trip off the tongue.
In his first conference speech as PM, Starmer must begin to give a sense of how he intends to transform the country, and speak in broad narratives, and political not managerialist tones. A fairer Britain? A more equal Britain? A more moral politics? It’s all up for grabs.
As soon as he does, as soon as the Government has a sense of where it’s going, he might just find that interest in his glasses starts to fade, and his negative poll ratings with it.
Lewis Goodall is a journalist, broadcaster and host of the podcast The News Agents
