I wish I hadn't said that...

Labour has finally put their £28bn pledge out of its misery. And added to Their 'what does Starmer stand for?' misery.

There’s an old joke about someone asking for directions to which the response from the world-weary local is “Well I wouldn’t start from here”. It seems to me, that this is exactly the problem the Labour Party has on the ongoing sore of the £28bn pledge and its current¹ status as deceased.

Throughout his leadership, Starmer has been beset by “I wouldn’t start from here” problems.

• How do you win the next election? Well, not having Jeremy Corbyn fight the last one would have been a good start.

• How do you win elections when you can’t even win a byelection in Hartlepool? Well, not fighting against a triumphal and popular Boris Johnson while the country is still in a rally around the flag moment.

• How do you completely change a party in order to make it electable? Well, don’t run on a set of continuity promises that you feel you have to make in order to get yourself over the line.

• How do you win an election when your opposition has an 80-seat majority? (This doesn’t need a “well…” - the wouldn’t start from here is obvious.)

Many of Keir’s ‘wouldn’t start from here’ problems have been powered through or overturned by a Tory Party that is being unusually helpful in trying to get Labour elected.

In terms of powering through, the first and third problems have been solved by taking a firm, radical and some would argue autocratic grip on the party. Keir has shown no problem at all in going into a party leadership election saying one thing and, having come through triumphant, doing quite the opposite. And the truth is this hasn’t hurt him all that much. The people who are most likely to raise it are those who neither believed him nor voted for him. It’s all very well the hard left and the Tories both trying to retrospectively claim Keir as the Corbynite candidate but that was Rebecca Long-Bailey - and everyone knew it at the time.

Everybody including, one would assume, Starmer’s campaign team. Who still had him campaign as Corbyn-lite, thus setting up the pledges all ready to be broken. Maybe they were convinced this was what was needed to get over the line in a close contest.

He won with 56.2 per cent of the vote. An eye-wateringly tight 28.6 per cent ahead of Long-Bailey. Perhaps they could have scraped through with just the five pledges…

He then appointed and promptly sacked Long-Bailey, who had barely been heard from since. He also, of course, sacked (as in withdrew the whip) from Jeremy Corbyn who has been heard from a little more. Though in the grand scheme of things, not so much as we might have done. Though the rumblings about what he might do next continue².

The hard left are largely subdued. At least for now. There was a brief sense that they might have a moment of resurgence as Stamer stumbled in some of his responses to the ongoing war in Gaza. But the truth is that response has improved and become much more nuanced and less flat-footed (admittedly because that’s where the US has got to). More importantly, there are loud, passionate voices from across the Party who resigned over Gaza and made it clear they did so while still supporting Starmer’s leadership. That meant there wasn’t a clear factional position to take. Other than on Twitter, but Twitter is an unrepresentative cesspit from hell and also matters far less than it used to.

On Starmer’s other ‘wouldn’t start from here’ problems - also known as the absolute state of the Labour Party after the shellacking we took in 2019, Stamer has been a very lucky general indeed.

Because while he and his staff have been ruthlessly focused inwards the Tories got incredibly complacent and decided that their power was so entrenched they had the space to go utterly and completely mad. I strongly suspect their collapse will be written about and studied for years to come. It has allowed - in the space of a parliamentary term for the conversation to go from ‘Can Labour ever win again?’ to ‘Will the Tories actually exist after the next election?’ I don’t really know how bookies work having only ever gambled playing the Lottery or poker, but I would be surprised if you could get any profit at all on betting on Labour to win the next election.

So to the 28bn ‘wouldn’t start from here’ problem. Supporters and detractors of the policy alike will probably tell you that putting a number on the policy was a mistake in the first place. The arguments against doing so are real - and they do speak to what those who have won the internal debate have been saying about it being a threat to Labour’s fiscal credibility.

But they did put a number on it. And short of inventing a time machine there’s nothing they can do about that. The Tories are - in fact - still using that number (well some of them are - as Tom Hamilton’s excellent post here demonstrates their disarray includes not knowing which attack line to lead on). The number exists and no amount of pretty social media posts featuring wind farms are going to hide the fact that the number existed as policy last week and today is is an ex-policy. It has ceased to be policy.

There is still some good stuff in Labour’s green policy. I have to remember that as I reach the depths of despair. But this is the problem with going down from a great promise to a quite goodish one. As the mighty James once sang: If I hadn’t seen such riches I could live with being poor.

But it feels to those of us who once championed Labour on their green offer that we are now being asked to choke on small beer. If they had started with one or two of these policies and ramped them up into a package that contained all the parts it does now, I would probably be relatively happy. Happier than I am now. I have to remind myself of that because the way this has been handled has been an absolute shitshow. And that matters to Labour for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, the idea of scraping the barnacles off the boat is to junk the barnacles - not the bloody boat. Labour have to be able to offer something that feels like it will make a difference to the members who will go out there and try to get them elected. This was - like it or not - our flagship policy. Now the ship is sinking and the only flag we’re waving is white. What is it we can say we will *do* on the doorsteps now other than not be the Tories? Honestly, genuinely, I don’t know.

Secondly, the disaster that has been this past few months - since around November when the first snivelling, cowardly, anonymous, poisonous, ratlike briefers started showing their lack of spine to a few journalists trying to undermine their boss (for his own sake of course) - has showed Starmer and his operation up really badly.

The briefers are shitheels of course. But they have been not just allowed to keep this appalling spectacle going but are now actively rewarded for it. Iron disciple might be the name of the game if you’re trying to organise a leaflet round in a lonely marginal and are waiting (and waiting and waiting) for sign off. It certainly hasn’t been in evidence among the top teams around Starmer and Reeves of late. Discipline for thee not for me I guess.

So the length of time this briefing was allowed to continue is one thing. But equally poor has been the continued mixed messaging. Why by the holy name of Leonard Cohen was Keir on Times Radio *this week* saying the money was “desperately needed” and denying we’re scaling back? It must have been obvious to someone by then this “desperately needed” policy was going to be more watered down than the squash at a publicly funded nursery school under the Tories. So why go so hard rather than hedge - which frankly Labour had been doing for months anyway?

They must hear the same things from their focus groups as the rest of us know about right? That Keir’s biggest problem is not seeming to stand for anything and being a flip flopper.

I’ve argued before that it would be misguided to try to turn Starmer into a superstar. But he did have a certain credibility leaning into his sense of solidity. His steely determination as Public Prosecutor could have come in handy coming to the fore during the election campaign. But the ground for that needed to be properly laid. There is a huge amount of psychological and psephological difference between not saying something in the first place and changing your mind on it publicly. And changing his mind this publicly leans into the opposite of solidity.

So even if they did decide that the supposed hit on economic credibility that comes with the figure was worth the trade-off to Keir’s reputation, he still didn’t need to have been front and centre backing the policy this week. That was a huge error.

Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think we will look back and say this is the week Labour lost the election (though it might be the beginning of the end of their chances for a second term). But I do think they are underpricing Keir’s vulnerability and overpricing Labour’s.

Keir looks weaker and less principled than ever. Lucky Keir that he’s up against Sunak. Lucky Labour that we’re up against the worst Tory Party in living memory.

But if Labour get to government there are going to be expectations on them to do more than boringly, snoringly balance the books. They need to FIX BRITAIN and that will take politics not just management. That will take investment in people's jobs and people’s services. That will need people with determination and ruthlessness to rule not just to win. Power not protest is all very well. But power is just as impotent as protest unless you’re ready and able to wield it.

After this week, Starmer has more work than ever before to do before he can convince people of that. And the people who might have once gone on doorsteps to try and help? We’re hiding away until we have something to actually say.

Sure, the football fan hindbrain will kick back in and I will want the red team to win on the day just as much as anyone. That is being a partisan for you. But today, well, unlike the tone of recent resignations, this isn’t more in sorrow than anger - it’s lashings of both with a stiff topping of disappointment and a strong added sprinkle of nerves about Keir’s consistently trashed reputation.

Do better Labour. Even if you do have to start from here.

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What I’ve been up to

A bonanza week for podcast fans! We have the usual two episodes of House of Comments where Charlotte and I discuss first the return of Stormont and Sturgeon’s Covid Inquiry appearance and then the bad weeks both Sunak and Starmer have had.

There are also two new episodes of Fabian Thinking. The first is on our recent polling analysis that shows Labour significantly ahead in the marginal seats it needs to win. The second on a report we released about what the UK can learn from Germany on their approach to working time.

As always, I made a number of appearances on GB News. Here’s me arguing against the - frankly nutty - idea that inheritance tax should be banned.

And here’s something a little different. I did an AMA (ask me anything) for the UK Politics Reddit - not natural territory for me. The questions were great though ranging from the impact of social media on politics to my approach to political strategy. It was a really interesting exercise in examining my own thoughts.

Umm finally…. I have an album coming out. No really. You can have a listen to a preview of the tracks here.

1. *I say current because part of the problem about fannying about on this so much is a sense - from supporters and foes of the policy alike - that it could be resurrected again.

2. (My thoughts on that here.)