As Keir Starmer eyes his glittering prize… Rishi Sunak will bash him on borrowing and borders
AS the glitter settles on another party conference season – possibly the last before the election – has anything really changed?
Team Starmer have their tails up, buoyed by polling data showing them nudging up on whether voters know who their man is and what he believes.
An eco-mobster armed with the arts and craft box aside, Labour’s conference went off relatively hitch free.
In scenes unimaginable just a couple of years ago, there was unity, driven no doubt by the hefty whiff of power in the air.
But the touchy feely hour-long turn by Sir Keir on Tuesday was almost entirely policy free too.
Overshadowed by the horrors of Hamas, the eyes of the world were mostly — and rightly — far away from the docks of Liverpool.
Yet there was a real sense of relief among MPs that the evil which unfolded in Israel last week did not come under Hamas’s “friend” Jeremy Corbyn.
Friend & colleague Corbyn
Almost every Shadow minister and Labour aide we spoke to at the conference was quick to make the point that “the nutters are outside the venue, not on the stage any more”.
Banished to the fringes of the event, even a characteristically graceless appearance from Magic Grandpa himself failed to put the leadership off their stride in their unequivocal backing of Israel’s right to defend herself.
Yet Corbyn was behind the weakest point of Starmer’s conference — floundering over the obvious question of why he sat in the hard-left Shadow Cabinet for all those years and said nothing.
“Lammy didn’t serve, Reeves didn’t, Wes didn’t serve — Keir did,” points out one senior Tory.
“He called the guy who called Hamas his friend, his friend.”
Starmer’s excuse was “my first words as Labour leader were, ‘We will rip anti-Semitism out by its roots’.”
But a simple check of the tape reveals that to be a fib.
Indeed, when Starmer took over as leader on April 4, 2020, before he addressed anything to do with the stain of anti-Jewish prejudice in Labour, he said: “I want to pay tribute to Jeremy Corbyn, who led our party through some really difficult times, who energised our movement and who’s a friend as well as a colleague.”
So while the Westminster bubble consensus was Labour won the season, with the Tories bickering about HS2, No 10 are far from unhappy with how it all went.
Rather than being down in the dumps, those around PM Rishi Sunak are scathing — “Who needs glitter when you have policies?” said one Cabinet minister.
“Starmer was more of the same from politician central casting,” added a Tory strategist.
“We learnt nothing about what he will do except borrow more.
“He says one thing and then you go back and check and he’s said something else.”
While Sunak took some bold swings of the bat on scrapping HS2 and achieved a rare cross-party consensus on banning smoking for today’s teens, MPs have noticed the big headlines from the conference were about what the Government was not doing, rather than what it will.
Pressure is growing for more positive policies to sell on the doorstep ahead of November 7’s King’s Speech, where the legislative agenda for election year will be set out.
And more doom and gloom from the Chancellor yesterday did not help matters.
Exactly one year ago today, Jeremy Hunt was given the keys to the Treasury with one job — save the British economy from meltdown.
But 12 months on and — despite a lot of reasons to be cheerful — Mr Hunt is still just as restrained.
A drab Autumn Statement on November 22, with little in the way of giveaways, is set to dismay impatient Tories crying out for something to sell on the doorstep.
“He’s the new Eeyore,” said one Conservative. “And a lot of us are getting sick of his doom and gloom.”
Chatter is still persistent that someone a little more upbeat will be needed in No11 to face the voters next year.
While No 10 remains chipper, the mood in the ministerial ranks is rather less so this weekend, especially as hopes that polls were tightening after the net zero brake-slamming appear to have been snuffed out.
“Across every single age and demographic we are now behind,” laments one minister, “The scale and depth of our unpopularity is something to behold.”
Hopes of holding on to the Mid-Bedfordshire by-election next Thursday have evaporated as the Lib Dems pull off from attacking Labour and go for Tory votes.
It would be the biggest ever majority overturned if Labour won the seat, with the Tamworth by-election also already being chalked up as a heavy loss for the Government that day.
Some MPs are clinging to the hope that hostility on the doorstep is not as hostile as the polls would suggest.
‘Man of change’ Sunak
But arguably what some are finding is worse — “If anything it’s a bit sympathetic,” one said. The last thing anyone hoping to win wants to be is the pity party.
Yet No 10 insiders hit back, insisting their new approach of casting Sunak as the man of change started well before party conference, and will continue long after — “But it’s going to take time to bear fruit.”
And they are delighted with two key concessions from Starmer in Liverpool.
Firstly, that his overhaul of investment in the UK will mean more borrowing, and secondly that he would scrap the Rwanda plan even if it was working.
“We’re going to spend the next few weeks bashing them round the head on two issues — borrowing and borders,” says a No 10 source.
A lot rests on any hope of getting a plane off to Rwanda in the run-up to next year’s election — with the Supreme Court verdict due back next month.
Privately, Home Secretary Suella Braverman is far more sceptical of a win than No 10 — the natural caution of a lawyer, says one ally — but a lot is banking on a “wheels up” moment to turn things around.