Where Labour has gone wrong and what to do about it.

They can learn from Zohran Mamdani and...Robert Jenrick

Labour came to office on a promise to stop the chaos. This week reminds us that this was a foolhardy undertaking. There is too much, too rotten in the British state and the inheritance they were left to make that claim. There is too much too volatile about world affairs and the transformed media/political environment, which underwrites and embeds instability into political systems. One of Labour’s biggest problems right now was their base unit of analysis back then- that the Tories’ fecklessness and incompetence was the biggest source of Britain’s ills. So, the theory went, a change in the political cast would do much to stem the chaos. Stability, as Reeves once flatly intoned, “would be the change.”

This was always a hollow critique. For sure, the Tories were corrosive. Their lust for division, their frenzied zeal, their slavishness to increasingly eccentric parts of the online right ecosystem, all made Britain worse and our politics more otiose. But these things were as much symptom as cause. As the government marks its first anniversary in office, there could hardly have been a grimmer background than the shambolic political picture on display on the floor of the Commons on Tuesday night, nor a grimmer pathos than the sight of the Chancellor’s tears on Wednesday afternoon. Politics is a tough business and few of us can truly reckon with the pressure and toll it takes on its most senior practitioners. Nonetheless, no-one forces anyone to want the highest offices. And whatever the genesis of Rachel Reeves’ sadness (her aides, briefed that she was dealing with a “personal problem” about which they would not expand), the effect is the same. In an era where Britain’s fiscal position is weak and vulnerable to capital market fluctuations, a G7 finance minister appeared to break down on the floor of the Commons, at precisely the moment where the government’s ability to control spending was in question. There has been a fair amount of comment about how tears in public should not be considered a failing. Perhaps, but politics is what it is and the market reaction is what it’s been. She knows what a profound misstep it was. Taken together, Reeves’ authority has never been weaker, at precisely the moment the markets have made clear that they will accept no-one else in her place. If you believe that many of the worst political misjudgments of this administration can be laid at Reeves’ door, then this is perhaps the worst of all outcomes.

How, after all of the hope and promise on the Labour side, did they get here, only a year into government? I’ve written much about the weakness of Labour’s political position and strategy these last twelve months. But I thought it might be useful to bring these many strands together and try and map out where Labour might go now. All is not lost, far from it.

Let’s start with the shambles that was the welfare bill. Some short term causes.

1. HMT: The welfare bill was never as advertised. Ministers from the PM down argued that Liz Kendall’s “reforms” would be transformative, both for the individuals concerned and the financial sustainability of the system. Neither was the case. These reforms always were back of fag packet territory. There had been little pitch rolling, nor really sustained thought about deep reform of the system (a theme to which we’ll return). Instead, this was an exercise largely directed by the Treasury, eyeing DWP’s massive budget and demanding a slice for other priorities. A proper reform programme would have cost money in the short term, in order to recoup savings long term. HMT didn’t want that. The outcome was deeply unappealing to Labour MPs from every wing of the party. The net result is that any savings from the enormous, ballooning and unsustainable welfare bill will be all but impossible this Parliament. This will worsen fiscal problems, making further tax rises in the autumn likely, not to mention leaving the thousands of young people who are on benefits on the scrap heap and who will likely endure lifelong professional scarring. Tears or not, Reeves must take her share of the blame for all this. A chancellor with a sharper political nose would have intuited early the political problems and sought to ameliorate them or defer. Not for the first time, she did what HMT told her was a good idea and she listend to her cost.

2. Parliamentary management: It was obvious for months that the welfare bill enjoyed almost no real support on the Labour benches. No 10 and 11 seemed curiously uninterested in this fact. There seemed to be an assumption that the size of the majority would cushion any rebellion. Long ago, this would have been a fair assumption. But majorities, even massive ones, don’t mean what they used to. Parliaments have become more rebellious for decades now, this is no exception. MPs are also more alive to their constituents’ views (they are inundated via every possible communications channel today, as opposed to the snail mail of the past) and the froth and excitement and piss and vinegar of Twitter. They are harder to manage.

But this is all part of a much larger picture, the seeds of which were sown long ago, and in opposition.

1. Inheritance: it is abominable. Too much of the media (conveniently) forgets this. There’s barely a part of the British state which is working and fit for purpose and part of the reason for that was the failure of austerity and obsession with Brexit, which robbed the state of time, money and energy for almost any other element of improvement for years. Labour are being buffeted by an inheritance which was worse than any in the past four decades.

2. Public sentiment: Neither Starmer nor Labour have ever enjoyed popularity. The PM’s poll ratings were at best tepid in opposition, and are somewhere near sub-arctic now. Labour achieved an enormous landslide on the basis of Tory collapse and a right wing vote which was split, barely achieving a greater share of the vote than Corbyn enjoyed in 2019. From the beginning, Starmer’s government has felt nervy, approaching its task gingerly, aware of the fragility of the coalition it created. In other words, they’ve carried the Ming Vase strategy from opposition, into government. That has been a mistake, making a weak position feel weaker even than it was.

3. Starmerism as an internal project: We must never forget that until the Tory debacle of 2022, it was widely assumed, even internally, that the raison d’être of Starmer’s leadership would be as a project of internal purification. His task was to return the Left to the sealed tomb. Combined with Covid, there was little in the way of intellectual renewal in opposition as there was with Blair in the 1990s, Cameron in the 2000s or even Miliband in the early 2010s. Starmer was carried to office by Tory collapse. There was little in the way of sustained thinking about governing philosophy or serious reform, indeed it was largely eschewed for fear of providing political ammunition for the then government. It worked at the time, but has been a major problem since.

4. Starmer frailties as a political thinker: This is the biggest problem of all and arises from the above. Labour currently suffers from a trio of central problems which are all interlinked (i) There is no external Starmer project (ii) Starmer is uninterested in and actively hostile to political ideas (iii) whatever political ideas the government does have are often muddled and Starmer/Reeeves often communicate them poorly. Starmer once famously said that “there is no Starmerism and there never will be.” This is more of a problem than an asset for a Labour prime minister and a Labour government. Conservative ministers and MPs can sustain themselves for a long time in office simply feeding on the pleasure of power. They gorge on it, savouring the relevance, the exercise of authority- they are satiated by it. Though they have been (increasingly) subject to spasms of profound ideology, in general they are better able to go without the sense of crusade, at least historically speaking. Labour MPs, generally, enjoy power far less, feel intrinsically uncomfortable with the hard choices which always have to be made, and the grubby compromises which go with it. To lubricate this process, what Labour MPs need is a sense of moral mission- a sense that there is an end goal, which makes any of those compromises worth it. Beyond general amelioration, beyond things getting more stable, beyond technocratic impulses of betterment- Starmer has not provided any of this. Consider the five missions, barely spoken of today. Few would argue with them, and that’s the problem. What Starmer lacks, and what his MPs desperately need him to provide, is a theory of social justice, of any hue. This would provide a rhetorical adhesive for his policies and a vocabulary for his MPs to go home and describe what it is that they are about. It almost doesn’t matter which he chooses: meritocracy, aspiration, equality of opportunity, equality of outcome- there are many social democratic traditions on which to draw. Starmer’s problem is that he chooses a bit of each, or none at all and it is a mess. His government ends up doing good, Labour things but without any attempt to bind them together in a clear political project. This lack of intellectual grounding helps explain one of the central paradoxes of British politics: that we have the most progressive, left-wing parliament in history and yet the radical right is making all of the intellectual running. It’s partly because, the progressives aren’t even turning up on the rhetorical battlefield. If Starmer and McSweeney are right, that the fight at the election is against Farage, then there needs to be a compelling and digestible answer as to why it is he is wrong, and progressive politics is right.

5. Poor media management: It is easy in these circumstances to blame comms. The far bigger problem is related to the above. There is no consistency of message. Consider the endless messages and framings we’ve spooled through in this last year. We’ve gone from toxic inheritance, to things will get worse before they get better, to we’ve already turned a corner, to mission driven government which became milestone driven government, to the tepid bath of decline, to sticking plaster politics, to islands of strangers, to stability being the change, to Nigel Farage being wrong to Nigel Farage being right, to Labour being the insurgents, scrapping NHS England and back again. If I struggle to keep track heaven knows all the public will hear is white noise. The PM’s comms’ team needs a simple set of messages and political signals which run through the heart of the govt to work with. Consider the power of the austerity framing in the 2010-15 parliament. It provided clarity and purpose even when the policy was wrong.

6. Fiscal position: Reeves is right about one thing. The Parliamentary Labour Party’s understanding of the frailty of Labour’s fiscal situation is risible. They need to grow up and realise that the era of cheap money is over. The post-Truss debacle means the capital market crosshairs are on our back. The history of Labour governments is replete with currency crises from which the party takes years or even decades to recover. Reeves knows all of this.

7. Foreign Affairs: the world is on fire. It’s taking up a lot of the PM’s time. That isn’t going to change. In the British system things only really happen when the centre drives it. The PM has often struggled to do this, as a result of the demands on his time from global events.

Yes there have been many individual contingent missteps. But none of them are as important as the structural factors outlined above. This is not intended as a council of despair. The government is nowhere near an irrecoverable position. They maintain their position within spitting distance of Reform in the polls. Here are some ideas heading into the autumn.

1. Use recess: the government is lucky that recess is close. This will be the first lengthy break MPs have enjoyed since the general election. This is crucial time. Starmer and his team can use it to craft a new message and strategise the new political year.

2. Reshuffle: the PM should reshuffle his team in September and be ruthless about it. His main criterion for assessing who deserves promotion, alongside general ability, is communication skill. The age of the automaton Labour interview needs to end.

3. Address comms strategy: As above, it is too easy to blame comms. But if No 10 can sharpen its political objectives and message then at that point No 10 should use the opportunity to completely overhaul the comms approach. Too often it feels as if they continue to exist in a 1990s command and control model which is no longer useful or sustainable. The attention span of the political universe is now such that a morning round appearance, which lasts the day, no longer cuts it. It is almost impossible now, as it was then, for the government to use the power of its bully pulpit to command the agenda, for there is no longer any sense of national conversation. The media now is too fragmented, too fractured. In this new, attention driven age, the government will have to be everything, everywhere all at once, with specific messaging and comms strategies for different population groups and media types. Priority should be made of new media: podcasts, tikTok, even Reddits. The government should be terrified that Farage enjoys more TikTok followers than every other British politician put together. The government could learn from both Mamdani and Jenrick. Both realise that vertical video is now the way of getting your message out there and generating huge attention, irrespective of your politics. Those videos can be more vibes based than actual policy message, as depressing as that might be to admit. In that spirit, comms managers should be less concerned about putting characterful politicians up for interview in more places. Authenticity is now what matters and is vital in seeing off the populists.

4. Take risks: The ming vase strategy needs to go. Labour can no longer afford to be seen as the political wing of the British state: gradualist, slow, technocratic. It has to surprise, it has to make some enemies. It has to show its supporters what it is for and what the point of its sustenance in office is. Money will remain tight, so new, zeitgeisty policies will be necessary. I would suggest a start with a reclaiming childhood agenda, properly regulating social media companies and their access to children’s attention.

5. Structures of government: It’s a moment for internal radicalism. No 10 is far too small to drive the change in Whitehall that is necessary. It’s finally time for a Prime Minister’s department to drive the scale of internal change which is necessary.

6. Address Starmer’s aloofness: Starmer is a paradox. A clearly decent man, a blokish Dad in his early 60s who understands the country far better than many of his opponents and many within the Labour Party. And yet his connection with the public feels slim to none. He appears as a remote, aloof figure, the public often assuming he is much posher than he is. He has to find a way to break out of the cage he’s put himself in and adopting a more radial media strategy, as well as overcoming his aversion to talking about ideas will help. Likewise, he will have to invest more time in parliamentary management. The cries this week from Labour MPs of wanting more facteime with the PM were in their own way pathetic, but also a warning sign. As needy as MPs might be, they need assuaging. They also need to grow up and realise what is at stake (see above and below).

And that is: everything. Not just the future of the Labour Party but politics as we’ve known it for the last century. Any government governing right now, would have a nearly impossible job. Labour made it worse for itself by going to sleep in opposition, (quite deliberately) and by Starmer’s refusal to engage with the intellectual elements of politics. But it is fatalist to argue that it actually is impossible: that would be to invite Farage into No 10. In order to succeed in the political environment, even to tread water, it is necessary to have outstanding (i) leadership (ii) intellectual vision (iii) political operation (iv) communication skills (v) parliamentary coherence. Right now, the government fits none of the above and is struggling. This isn’t a normal administration. If it isn’t able to get its act together, deliver but most crucially be seen to be delivering then it could be the last Labour government for a very long time. Reform’s entire premise, a deeply saleable message, is that none of the political elites are able to govern and that radical measures (themselves) are required. It is not just Labour’s future at stake here, but keeping Britain out of the hands of the radical right. If they cannot, if they cannot recognise the scale of the problems this summer and act upon them, it won’t only be Rachel Reeves who has cause to shed tears.