Labor leader Sir Keir Starmer told his new shadow cabinet on Tuesday that the party must prove it is ready to take power in Britain as he puts his top team on the grounds of an election.
Sue Gray, a former senior civil servant hired by Starmer to prepare for a Labor government, watched and took notes at the meeting at Church House in central London. “Things don’t feel the same,” said one shadow cabinet member.
While Starmer warned colleagues against complacency – noting that “not a single vote was cast” – shadow ministers said there was a sense that a party had moved in spirit from opposition to the prospect of taking power.
A member of Starmer’s team added: “It really feels like the starting gun has been fired for a long election campaign.”
Meanwhile, in Downing Street, Rishi Sunak is charting the political front in his cabinet, with a Conservative Party conference, a parliamentary by-election and key events in Westminster expected in the autumn.
The contours of the race changed on Tuesday as the government announced it would hold a by-election on October 19 in the once-safe Middle Bedfordshire constituency of former Conservative secretary Nadine Dorries. Clearer.
Meanwhile, Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt announced he would deliver his autumn statement on 22 November, an important moment in an attempt to regain the political initiative, with some Conservative MPs calling for tax cuts.
It follows Sunak’s visit to India this week for the G20 summit, the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Manchester in early October and a highly political King’s Speech in Parliament expected to outline the government’s legislative plans on Nov. 7.
But one minister said the mood at Tuesday’s cabinet meeting was “clearly subdued” as the British government was mired in school collapses and trailed by 15 to 20 percentage points in opinion polls.
Gray, who conducted an inquiry into Whitehall’s Covid-19 lockdown parties during Boris Johnson’s tenure as prime minister, is a former public servant whose appearance in Labour’s top seat suggests Starmer hopes to get in soon. Main Downing Street.
The Labor leader, two days into his tenure as Starmer’s chief of staff, wants Gray to plan a post-election transition to government, with party strategists believing Sunak could call an election as early as summer 2024.
“It’s hard to see how things are going to get better for the Conservative Party, so why delay?” said one shadow cabinet member.
Starmer’s shadow cabinet reshuffle on Monday involved the promotion or return of ministers or advisers in Tony Blair’s Labor government, including Hilary Benn and Pat McFadden.
“Some of us have known Sue since the last time we were in power,” said one shadow cabinet member. Starmer’s hiring of Gray angered the top Conservative Party and she was forced to take six months of gardening leave.
Starmer told the shadow cabinet that Labor’s annual conference in Liverpool would be a pivotal moment to “show that we as a party are ready” and “get the answers the country desperately needs”.
Allies of the Labor leader claimed the party would focus less on what the current Conservative government called “13 years of failure” at the conference and more on the opposition’s remedies.
These are often difficult to discern. Shadow ministers regularly appear in radio interviews to denounce the government, only to find themselves lashing out at what Labor would do.
Starmer, who has come under fire from the Labor left for bringing “Blairites” into his team, knows he will be accused of not being bold enough, especially if Labor’s poll lead narrows.
“Things always get more difficult towards the end of the game,” Starmer said. “We have to keep an eye on the prize.”
Sunak sees the Conservative Party conference as an important moment for him to “restructure” the government, introducing new policies to achieve the economic rebound he wants by 2024.
“The plan is to be able and see that the economic winds change and it will change,” one minister said. “I can see the economic situation improving by the middle of next year.” Downing Street insists on cabinet sentiment“ optimism”.
Ministers were both relieved and irritated after the Office for National Statistics upgraded official figures to show the UK’s economic recovery was stronger than previously thought.
“This is a scandal – if we had known that, the economic narrative would have been different,” one minister said.
Downing Street said Hunt told the cabinet that the UK had recovered faster than France, Germany and Italy since the pandemic, claiming it proved “the UK’s ability to grow its economy outside the EU”.
But Sunak is struggling to shake off the legacy of 13 years of Conservative rule, which includes errors, scandals and – in the case of dangerous concrete in school buildings – a record failure to maintain the nation’s public infrastructure.
One minister said Education Secretary Gillian Keegan’s handling of the issue was “frustrating”, adding that her expletives about not being appreciated for her work were “not ideal” “.
The problem for Sunak is that any attempt to set an agenda has been scuttled, giving the impression of an accident-prone or chaotic government.
“People are fed up,” said one minister. “We’re dealing with legacy issues. There’s a lot of noise around — it’s proving overwhelming.”
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