Labour had a theory for acquiring power, but none for how to wield it
A lack of interest in the real meat of policy helps to explain why Starmer’s first year in government has gone so badly
STEPHEN BUSH
At the leaving do to mark the departure of Rav Athwal, the former Treasury official who wrote Labour’s 2024 manifesto, there were speeches by various Cabinet ministers, but it was Ed Miliband who stole the show. He praised Athwal for his role in doing something very few people ever do — writing a manifesto that ends in a Labour victory. The authors of winning Labour manifestos — be they Michael “The Rise of the Meritocracy” Young or, as Miliband reminded his audience, his own brother, David — go on to great things. But they are rare. As Miliband said, he should know: he wrote one losing manifesto, for Gordon Brown in 2010, and was the frontman for another in 2015.
Miliband is not shy about making jokes at his own expense or of taking the time for small gestures of kindness, which helps to explain why, despite his role in two defeats, he is Keir Starmer’s most influential Cabinet minister. (The other reason, which is less flattering for everyone, is that he possesses an all-too-rare commodity around the Cabinet table: a serious grip on what he wants to do with his department and a strong sense of how to do so.)
One driver of the bleak and mutinous mood in and around the Labour government is that, just a year into the party’s time in office, almost everyone believes that the author of Labour’s 2029 manifesto is more likely to end up emulating Miliband, not Athwal. MPs complain that the Downing Street operation has managed to both be overly obsessed with an election four years away (at the expense of focusing on policy in the here and now), while also being on course to lose. As one MP puts it: “We have a wartime consigliere . . . but we’re losing the war.”
Although much of the Starmer government’s policy agenda is very far from Blairite, Labour won a landslide victory a year ago because they rediscovered some of Tony Blair’s old truths, not least the value of his first piece of advice for defeated parties: “Start with an honest analysis of why you are in opposition.”
On this score, Starmer and his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, came up with an impeccable theory for Labour failure: the party was seen as too radical, unpatriotic and liable to play fast and loose with people’s money. As a result, Starmer’s Labour loudly embraced limitations on what it would do on tax and rarely, if ever, appeared anywhere without a union jack to serve as the backdrop.
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Opinion Labour party UK
Labour had a theory for acquiring power, but none for how to wield it
A lack of interest in the real meat of policy helps to explain why Starmer’s first year in government has gone so badly
STEPHEN BUSH
At the leaving do to mark the departure of Rav Athwal, the former Treasury official who wrote Labour’s 2024 manifesto, there were speeches by various Cabinet ministers, but it was Ed Miliband who stole the show. He praised Athwal for his role in doing something very few people ever do — writing a manifesto that ends in a Labour victory. The authors of winning Labour manifestos — be they Michael “The Rise of the Meritocracy” Young or, as Miliband reminded his audience, his own brother, David — go on to great things. But they are rare. As Miliband said, he should know: he wrote one losing manifesto, for Gordon Brown in 2010, and was the frontman for another in 2015.
Miliband is not shy about making jokes at his own expense or of taking the time for small gestures of kindness, which helps to explain why, despite his role in two defeats, he is Keir Starmer’s most influential Cabinet minister. (The other reason, which is less flattering for everyone, is that he possesses an all-too-rare commodity around the Cabinet table: a serious grip on what he wants to do with his department and a strong sense of how to do so.)
One driver of the bleak and mutinous mood in and around the Labour government is that, just a year into the party’s time in office, almost everyone believes that the author of Labour’s 2029 manifesto is more likely to end up emulating Miliband, not Athwal. MPs complain that the Downing Street operation has managed to both be overly obsessed with an election four years away (at the expense of focusing on policy in the here and now), while also being on course to lose. As one MP puts it: “We have a wartime consigliere . . . but we’re losing the war.”
Although much of the Starmer government’s policy agenda is very far from Blairite, Labour won a landslide victory a year ago because they rediscovered some of Tony Blair’s old truths, not least the value of his first piece of advice for defeated parties: “Start with an honest analysis of why you are in opposition.”
On this score, Starmer and his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, came up with an impeccable theory for Labour failure: the party was seen as too radical, unpatriotic and liable to play fast and loose with people’s money. As a result, Starmer’s Labour loudly embraced limitations on what it would do on tax and rarely, if ever, appeared anywhere without a union jack to serve as the backdrop.