Keir Starmer locks in Labour’s non-threatening image

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Good morning from Liverpool. Why does the Labour party lose so many elections? My first answer to that is “how long have you got?” But one reason is lingering anxieties about the party’s handling of the economy.

Reassuring voters about this concern is why Keir Starmer made Rachel Reeves shadow chancellor and it is why every announcement at this conference thus far has been funded by closing a loophole or through reallocating existing spending. Reeves continued that theme in her own conference speech yesterday, and now Starmer has to do it in his speech today. Some thoughts on all that below.

Safety first

What do we want? Non-threatening change! When do we want it? At a pace that doesn’t scare Middle England! That’s the throughline of everything Keir Starmer has done and said since he became leader, and it was the throughline of the speech that Rachel Reeves, his shadow chancellor and most important ally, gave to the party conference yesterday.

This year, that message was given an injection of real stardust thanks to a surprise appearance by Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, who essentially endorsed Reeves as the next chancellor of the exchequer. This endorsement was kept so secret it was a surprise even to the shadow cabinet; only a handful of aides in the shadow Treasury team and the leader’s office knew about it.

For most people, of course, this is much ado about nothing. But it sends an important signal among the political class: that this is a serious Labour party, with a serious shadow chancellor, and that the mantle of leadership has passed from the Conservatives to Labour.

Party conferences have three audiences. The first audience is within the party — if you can’t carry this audience with you, you can’t get anything else done either. The second audience are your stakeholders more broadly — businesses, civic society, the media and so forth. The third audience is the public as a whole: if you are lucky, you get the news cycle to yourself and as a result you get to communicate something about who you are and where your party is going.

The message to the country as a whole is one of “non-threatening change”, and it is mostly irrelevant, because events in Israel mean Labour is not going to get much of a hearing. The message to the party is “don’t mess it up, keep disciplined, we could still lose” — that was essentially the text of Rachel Reeves’ speech. But the message to businesses, civic society and the media is “we are a serious operation and we’re going to win”. That is why Carney’s endorsement was such a coup for the party.

What does Starmer need to do in his speech today? Well, it depends on when you think the next election will be. If you think, as many in Labour do, that we are heading to an election in May, then he needs to set out what political strategists like to call “the retail offer”: vote Labour and get x.

But if, as I do, you think that we are probably about a year away from the next election, then what Starmer needs to do is deliver the big picture stuff — my national missions are to fix x, y, z. He should instead aim to unveil Labour’s campaign pitch in the spring.

Starmer himself has said that he thinks the next election is likely to be in November: so expect more big picture, non-threatening change in today’s speech.

Now try this

This week, I mostly listened to Christina Vantzou and John Also Bennett’s excellent new modern classical record, Klima, while writing my column. I’ve added it, plus a couple of other recommendations from this slot that I had forgotten, to the Inside Politics Spotify playlist.

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