Fast politics and slow politics

Or why - despite a great week - a year or so out from an election can feel like the absolute worst time for an opposition

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I have chosen not to do a deep dive into the local election results. Mostly as pretty much every other newsletter I subscribe to will do that. But also because I want to talk more broadly about electoral cycles when it comes to General Elections. But what we do now have is a Labour Party that has proved it is not just rebuilding its electoral coalition but also taking advantage of Tory weakness.

There is also, of course, an immediate narrative that it is only the latter that counts. That Labour isn’t winning so much as the Tories are losing. That Labour aren’t doing well enough. It’s that narrative - and the moment in which it sits I want to look at today.

Politics has two very distinct speeds.

Some of it is very fast. It happens in daily newspapers, hourly news bulletins, 24-hour rolling news and constantly on Twitter. It is reactive and direct and about the story of the day. Political communicators are obsessed with supposed rules around news cycles.

But most of it - the nine-tenths of the iceberg that we don’t see - is very slow. It’s about the long, hard graft of developing policy and testing it. About thinking about funding choices and mechanisms. About shaping a vision from those policy choices that will tell a story of a different world that each individual choice will make only an incremental contribution to.

It is this slow politics that makes this point in the electoral cycle so incredibly frustrating for those leading the opposition, those supporting them and those commenting on them. And yes, results like Thursdays will help for a while. But because of the aforementioned fast news impulse, these frustrations won’t be banished for long. Already the response from both Tories and the anti-Starmer left is that the local election results are not about enthusiasm for Starmer and his party but a protest against wider forces. Of course that is partly true. But equally, no one passes a purity test when they walk into the polling station (though they do now have to jump through the ridiculous hoop of providing ID0. Your motives don’t matter - the results do.

True or not, fair or not though, this will probably be a narrative that sticks. Particularly during the period in the interregnum between the last big local elections and the (probably) penultimate conference - which I think is the hardest moment in the electoral cycle for an opposition

Governments get to do things and do them now. Oppositions don’t. Sometimes when they suggest things that could and should be done, the government comes along and does them and takes the credit for them (see the emphasis on childcare in Jeremy Hunt’s recent budget. Inadequate as this offer is, it is still closing the gap - and therefore political resonance - on Labour’s offer). No wonder then, that Labour are currently playing their policy cards very close to their chests.

However, this is not without issues - ones that are getting more and more pressing for Labour.