Welcome to Ms Whip's House of Discipline Mr Starmer
The Shadow Cabinet reshuffle shows a new sense of single-minded mission for Labour - now someone tell the briefers.
I have Covid. Mostly this hasn’t been too bad. A mild cough and scratchy throat. tiredness that hits me suddenly and completely. I am sleeping a lot. Today - newsletter day! - I am feeling a little worse than I have before. I’m a bit achy and my head is a bit woolly. So if this is even less coherent than usual, please forgive and bear with me!
This week saw Labour deliver a reshuffle which is both generally impressive and was - on the whole - well delivered. I am going to go back to the ‘on the whole’ part in a bit, but I am aware I have been a bit - perhaps overly - negative about Labour of late and so I want to correct that by saying that I think this reshuffle tells a good story about what Labour is trying to do and why.
For me, the reshuffle tells a story about a Keir Starmer who has grown in self-confidence enough to surround himself with people who gossipy Westminster types (of which, of course, I am one) will see as pretenders to his job. This is a really, really good thing as long as they realise that the best way to prove they should, one day, lead the Labour Party is by doing a really good job at the top end of the Labour Party. Newer talent like Wes Streeting and Bridget Phillipson both do an excellent job in speaking out on Labour issues and bashing the Tories along the way (and importantly, usually in that order). Lisa Nandy was sidelined in the Shadow Foreign Secretary role (any real foreign policy is and always will be set by the leader of the Opposition and there is little actual diplomatic work to be done in the role - certainly in the early stages of a parliament). But she bided her time and worked loyally and threw off some of the worst aspects of her poor leadership campaign to regain a reputation as a strong media defender of the Party and attacker of the government.
Nandy is now in a brief that suits her long-stated interest in Towns and in putting her opposite Gove in this supposed flagship area of government policy (though news reaches us today that they have delayed the Levelling Up White Paper yet again, so quite how flaggy or shipshape it really is is anyone’s guess) shows a clever deployment of talent on a key agenda. The same can be said of bringing Yvette Cooper back to the Home Affairs brief having honed her skills as chair of the Select Committee.
What strikes me most about this reshuffle is which briefs have been most beefed up with these strong performers. Education, Crime, Jobs, Health, Housing - the basics of a decent and secure life. I have written before about the importance of Labour moving away from debating fanciful obscurant areas of politics among itself to talking about the things that matter to voters. This reshuffle signals a willingness to do just that. To put the everyday security of voters at the heart of the Labour offer.
That is the message that this reshuffle is clearly designed to put forward. What will be needed now is the discipline to carry that message forward. To not get bored of that message and to rigidly ignore attempts to throw Labour off that message from the left and right, from the press and members and lobby groups. If Labour is to be a collective party seeking to represent the whole country then they must find the things we have in common.
What unites us all - and especially in this age where precarity has become prevalent in so many parts of our lives - is a desire for a sense of security. All messaging must come back to this and all policies should be presented through this lens. It is a good lens to have chosen. But even if I didn’t think that I would still argue that if this is the focus the party has chosen, what it must now have is the discipline to follow through with it. That I am in favour of it just heightens my desire for that discipline.
So here’s the difficult bit and the bit that some clearly haven’t got their heads around yet. Labour sorely, sorely, sorely lacks discipline.
The reason the reshuffle was only good “on the whole” was the pointless row and speculation that was caused by the whole thing being briefed to the Sunday Times bringing it forward and cutting across an important speech by Angela Rayner. Thus creating an unnecessary internal argument story that undercuts the message of security.
Later, when asked to comment on the said story a Labour insider gave this quote:
Please fuck deeply and all the way off whichever macho posturing shitheel thought those were appropriate words to use out loud. You are as bad at your job as you are at running off your mouth.
Equally, I’d like ten minutes alone with whoever thought this was a good thing to say to a journalist:
Finally, we have the ridiculousness of the fact that the apparent suspension of someone for briefing has been… briefed.
Politics is a gossipy and people-centred world and being in the know can be a heady and exciting place to be. I get that. But that isn’t what you’re paid for. You are supposed to be the implementers of discipline from the top down - not the exceptions to the rules. One reason I have moved away from being an activist is that I don’t think doing so is compatible with being a commentator. That goes double for staffers. You want to be a commentator and show the world your working (with little or no understanding or belief that those you want to are listening)? Take a pay-cut and try to place pieces in the papers like the rest of us. Otherwise - show, don’t tell.
Equally, too many of Starmer’s people have a wrong-headed approach to how to manage their internal party issues.
Firstly, they are convinced that what is needed is not just one but repeated moments of definition against the left of the party. This is repeatedly confused with the very real need to have strongly obvious breaks with specific wrongs of the last five years.
So yes, it is essential that Starmer and co continue to visibly rebuild relationships with the Jewish Community and implement the EHRC reforms in full. That is different from briefing against anyone to the left of the leadership - up to and including Angela Rayner. That briefing muddies what was wrong with the last five years while also making Labour’s internal beef your focus - not our relationship with either the Jewish Community or voters as a whole.
Message discipline is boring and tiresome and will annoy the journalists you like and want to impress. That’s the deal you make if you want an electable party.
Do you?
I run a political and communications consultancy called Political Human. Please get in touch if you are looking for consultancy advice, copywriting, editing, training or coaching.
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I am also a playwright and director. My debut piece No Cure For Love can be seen here.
I am working on my next piece Triggered with a view to staging it next summer. I have made quite a bit of progress with it this week. I do not have a fundraising mechanism for this yet, but a coffee to keep me going would be welcome.
What I’ve been up to
Because of the bloody Covid I have not been to the theatre this week. Boo!
However I did write a piece on the reshuffle for The Article.
Questions, comments and arguments are very welcome. Insults will get you summarily blocked on every platform that no longer hosts Donald Trump. I’m at emmaburnell@gmail.com or on Twitter (far too often) at @EmmaBurnell_.