Labour activists are making their way to Liverpool for the annual party conference in a downbeat mood less than 80 days after Sir Keir Starmer’s stunning victory in the general election.
So far, things have not gone well. There has been no “100 days” or “honeymoon” for the new Government. The relentless “blame the Tories” messaging has not generated any enthusiasm for “Change”, the powerful but insubstantial slogan stamped across the Labour campaign. Evolving it to “Change Begins” this week for the Liverpool conference is unlikely to set hearts beating any faster.
Thanks to loud warnings of a “painful” Budget on the way on 30 October, the Consumer Confidence Index has slumped back to the level it was at the beginning of this year.
Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer and his key staff are embroiled in controversy over freebies and pay, undermining their claims to be better than the last lot. Both Starmer and Labour are down in opinion poll ratings.
The new Government has lost control of the narrative. Admittedly, it has not been helped by an inquisitorial attitude from broadcasters and reflex hostility from much of the national press.
But the deeper problem is that the media and the nation have not been offered anything constructive to ponder. Never mind a vision, there appears to be no communications strategy.
Not very good at politics
For all the vaunted professionalism of ex-chief prosecutor Starmer, super-strategist Morgan McSweeney, and legendary Whitehall mandarin Sue Gray, there is apparently nobody around advising, “I wouldn’t do that, it won’t look good” or, “why are we doing this in this way?”.
The Cabinet Secretary Simon Case, who might have been expected to inject some Sir Humphreyish caution, is instead a wounded beast, spurned and soon for the glue factory.
The last prime minister, Rishi Sunak, was said to be “not very good at politics”. Hard-working and intelligent of course but oblivious to the impression left by cutting D-Day commemorations, smarming up to Elon Musk, taking private jets and displaying pricy billionaire trinkets.
The new prime minster doesn’t seem to be very good at politics either. Starmer has not built himself up as a national leader. His forays on the international stage have been hedged with caution. At home he has been reluctant to expand on who he is.
He has reduced his “hinterland” to boring on about watching Arsenal – hardly remarkable considering he is the club’s local MP. He has no favourite book or film and won’t talk about his family, except for the jobs of his deceased parents.
Favourite excuse
He used his round of pre-conference interviews to “justify” being the House of Commons top gift-taker. Sir Keir is a lawyer first, and if it is legal, within the rules, he does not see a problem with enjoying perks not available to others. He forgets that “it’s not against the law” was a favourite excuse of Boris Johnson apologists.
Sir Keir is a decent man who has prepared diligently for what he thought being Prime Minister is all about. But, just like Gordon Brown before him, he is discovering that being the occupant of No 10 is not like running the biggest government department – say the Treasury or the Crown Prosecution Service.
Stuff, challenges and opportunities come at the Prime Minister constantly from all directions. As Tony Blair says in his new leadership manual, “policy” should come first but the “politics” matter too.
Starmer doesn’t have the instinct for political presentation. He urgently needs advisers around him who do, if he is to lead a lasting government that makes a difference.
Cuckoos in the nest
This Prime Minister wants to be in charge of everything, by fiat, bridling with the full dignity of his office. This is no way to win friends and influence people in the 24/7 media age, especially when there is no one close to him, willing to abandon shadowy briefings to go out and articulate the case. No big personalities in Starmer’s entourage are keen to take flack for him or to take the risk of actually answering a question directly.
Tony Blair was his own best ambassador but he still depended heavily on loyal aides including Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell to go out and explain what the government was doing and why. Margaret Thatcher knew where she wanted to go – but leant on Tim Bell, Bernard Ingham, Gordon Reece and the Saatchi brothers to get her there.
The leader and those developing their story need to be in genuine agreement. Off the peg alliances come to grief. Dominic Cummings with Boris Johnson, or Fiona Hill and Nick Timothy with Theresa May turned into cuckoos pushing the prime minister out of the nest. David Cameron thought he knew better than his friends, including the supremely tactical George Osborne.
‘Blame the Tories’
It is early days yet for Sir Keir. The UK’s electoral system has presented him with a seemingly impregnable overall parliamentary majority in exchange for just a third of the votes cast on 4 July. He has time on his side but promises of long term prospects improving won’t get Labour re-elected.
Labour MPs are clinging to the hope that the doom and gloom has been overstated deliberately. Ministers may have been saying things are worse than they are to create room to bounce back with positive measures for growth and brighter times.
We shall see. There is as yet no hint of more promising news from the top. Sources are insisting that there will be no let up in fiscal discipline. Chancellor Reeves will bank any extra headroom there may be rather than, say, soften the winter fuel payments cut for pensioners. The common theme for every ministers’ speech at conference has been set at “blame the Tories”.
Doing his own messaging, Sir Keir Starmer used his pre-conference interviews to compare the Government’s task to stripping everything back first before “doing up a house”. This rather bourgeois metaphor may be more suited to a north London barrister than a champion of “working people”.
More ominously, if Sir Keir has any experience of renovations – or Grand Designs – he will know that they often run over budget and over time. The householder is left searching for a new contractor with the job still not completed.
Adam Boulton presents Sunday Morning on Times Radio