Lessons in Love

After a bruising week for the government what should they learn to do differently? And can they show a restive PLP that they too will be treated with respect and dignity?

The coming week will mark a year since the Labour government was elected with a landslide number of MPs but a lowish vote share. There will also be a vote on the Universal Credit and Personal Independence Payment Bill that will now probably pass its second reading, but only in a form that bears little resemblance to what was originally proposed, after the government had to make significant changes to stave off a rebellion that would have seen them defeated.

So what went wrong? And more importantly, what can be learned in order to stop Labour getting into this state again?

In the recent - excellent - profile of Keir Starmer by Tom McTague, one of the standout lines is Starmer’s unwavering sense that his purpose is to promote “Human dignity….the dignity of the individual. And the respect that goes with it.”

Dignity - in particular the dignity of work - is one of the key arguments the government deployed in favour of its welfare reforms. It’s an argument I - and many of the rebels - have some sympathy with. But it wasn’t the right argument for these reforms, not least because many of the people claiming Personal Independence Payments do so while in work, and are able to work because they do so.

The government kept trying to make this an argument about whether to reform welfare or not. But that was not the argument the rebels were making. It was the government, not the rebels who took a maximal all-or-nothing position. The government who failed to properly listen and engage with what was being said by those who would happily reform the system, but do not believe this is the right way to do it.

By trying to make the argument ‘reform or not reform’ the government fell into the trap of not answering the rebels’ argument that these were the wrong reforms, rushed through to balance OBR spreadsheets, not tackle the broken welfare system. Which only strengthened the rebels’ conviction that this was the case.

If the government is going to do better when it comes to the next tricky thing they need to do, they will have to learn to negotiate better. And that starts with being able to make better arguments to their own side. It means genuinely caring about what the objections are. Listening to what is really being said to them - not the strawman version they want to hear because that is what they think they can counter.

They also need to make better thought-through choices. This doesn’t mean not making the hard choices you are inevitably faced with in government. But if they had put the intellectual legwork needed into deciding the proposed changes to the welfare bill in the first place, they would have done most of the work needed to convince their colleagues of their necessity.

That they didn’t have the arguments to convince colleagues strengthened the widespread belief on the backbenches that they were neither listened to nor respected by Number 10. That their human dignity - and the respect that comes with it - is being trampled on.

If this really is something Starmer sees as his core value - and I have no reason to think it is not - it is a bit baffling that when you talk to backbenchers, you don’t get any sense that they feel treated with dignity or respect. Quite the opposite. And if that is a value that is so intrinsic in you, it is what brought you into politics, there is no excuse for it not showing in the way you treat your colleagues and underlings.

Respect from and respect for our colleagues matters. Work is what we do for most of our day, most of our lives - especially those who work under the incredibly difficult circumstances that MPs do. They have no HR support; they work excessively long hours; they are under constant scrutiny and receive torrents of abuse.

Being an MP can be a hard and lonely life. People get into it because they are dedicated to a cause and want to do everything they can to make that cause succeed. As the leader of that cause, Starmer is going to have to learn to show them the gratitude and respect they deserve. He may not be the most clubbable of leaders, but he does have a highly developed work ethic. He must now realise that cultivating these colleagues is part of that work and put the focus on that he has found for other parts of the job.

In the run-up to (and during) the election campaign, there was a lot of focus - including here - on the deselection or blocking of a number of candidates. There was, perhaps, less focus on those that got through Labour’s rigorous - perhaps even brutal - processes.

Nicknamed the Starmtroopers there was a belief that they had been cultivated for their loyalty alone. That they would arrive at Parliament ready to be biddable no matter what. But this was probably never going to be the case when you are talking about over 400 people with the ambition and drive to get through that selection process and to go on to be elected.

It is certainly true that most of them want to be as loyal as possible. For some, that’s because they believe that’s how an MP should behave. For some, it’s because they genuinely support everything the government is doing. For some, it is because they seek advancement and know that this is the way the game is played. All of these are valid career and political positions to hold.

But they were also chosen over others to be there. And they have to believe that happened for a reason. No one likes to think of themselves that they are only there to make up the numbers. These people were lauded by Starmer’s team as the most talented - and diversely talented at that - group to ever enter parliament. In the vast majority of cases, that’s true. The current PLP comes with a really interesting array of skills, backgrounds and experiences. They came ready to serve loyally and well and to do their dream job to the best of their - not inconsiderable - abilities.

But all too often, they have been seen as lobby fodder without even the courtesy of being thanked for this loyal service or treated with an understanding of the position they were being put in when asked to make and defend choices the government themselves were only able to offer the flimmiest of defences for.

Going forward, all of this has to change. And this change has to start in Number 10 and the Treasury, who are going to have to do a very real and very deep engagement job with the PLP they rely on to pass their legislation. They will have to have conversations with MPs at the start of the fiscal and policymaking process, not try to bounce them into blind support at the eleventh hour.

If they do so, they may find that they discover the landmines and elephant traps before they burst into the open. They may find that they do not always know best, and that consulting with well-meaning colleagues who want you to succeed is a sign of strength, not of weakness. And that these conversations lead to stronger legislation, too.

Stamer’s team are a notoriously closed circle. But that approach has failed. If they are as determined to ruthlessly focus on succeeding in government and winning the next election as we are told, that ruthlessness has to be put to the need to change - not allowed to calcify into intransigence. If they can direct that energy into mending their fractured relationships with colleagues; if they can show the clear-sightedness that they used in building the PLP they wanted by looking at - and dealing with - their own weaknesses; If they can learn to accept that human dignity and the respect that comes with it matters in their own workplace and Parliament then it won’t be too late for Labour to recover from this moment and to succeed in delivering in the way that every Labour MP, member and supporter wants them too.

It is a comforting thought that Labour members (outside of Scotland and Wales) repeat to themselves often that the next election is a long way away.

This is true.

It is, however, a sobering thought that this becomes less true every day.

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