Instead, British politics over the last decade has seen the rise of the celebrity adviser — staff who have been visible shapers of the government agenda and essential to the party leader or Prime Minister. When I was in Downing Street working for Prime Minister Tony Blair, the Chief of Staff was the former mandarin Jonathan Powell, a calm, long-serving presence who focused on the critical issues of Northern Ireland and defense and security. Personalities vary, but the elevation of Chief of Staff started with Dominic Cummings, who worked for Boris Johnson as Chief Adviser. As a named and known figure, Cummings had his own reputation as a political player, having successfully led Vote Leave to victory in the Brexit referendum, and maintained his own links with the media when inside No 10. He continued to narrate his own theory of the case to selected journalists even through the national crisis of Covid, culminating in the infamous press conference held in the Downing Street garden.

Cummings established a set of behaviors and assumptions that have continued to define the Chief of Staff role. Blaming the civil service. Attempting to strengthen the center of government. Concentrating flows of information. Briefing journalists. Suspending the whip from MPs. This, sadly, became a model for Keir Starmer’s No 10 operation. 

The obvious flaw in the Cummings model is captured by that former Labour Cabinet minister Clare Short’s description of special advisers as “people who live in the dark”. She meant it as an attack on spin doctors,  but it was also good advice. The iron law of staffing is that you must not become the story. And when you do — whether you are Alastair Campbell, Dominic Cummings, or Morgan McSweeney — you will have to go. Each fell in different ways: Alastair went to war with the media, finally turning up on screen; Dom lost an internal Downing Street power struggle; Morgan took responsibility for his closeness to Peter Mandelson. Yet each had become a household name — the very opposite of lurking in the shadows. 

The less obvious structural problem is that, over the past decade, the job of Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom has been held by 14 different people. This, too, is part of the Cummings legacy. The reason is Brexit. That was the ultimate project of change without a plan, and it has set the template for UK politics. A profound rejection of “things as they are” to which politicians repeatedly failed to respond. Theresa May — no plan, just a hard Brexit with a “dementia tax” and restoration of hunting. Boris Johnson — no plan, and he was not saved by his swift response to the global crisis of Covid. Rishi Sunak — no plan but some spreadsheets and some welcome but insufficient incremental changes. Keir Starmer — no plan, not even a plan to make a plan.

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John Prescott never pulled his punches

By John McTernan

For a decade, voters have demanded change, whether opting for Brexit, surging to Corbyn, or delivering landslides in turn to Johnson and Starmer. What to change from is obvious: the status quo. What to change to is far more opaque, not least because neoliberal governance, or the “Treasury view”, as it is commonly known, is the paradigm within which government politicians live and think. The bond vigilantes have been beseeched to attack Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, to support the government’s Budget, and now to quell backbench Labour unease. Just look at how easily the current Labour leadership turns to the bond markets for support in party management. 

There is a desperate need for Labour to break with the current political frame, which for a decade has ensured virtually no growth in wages and living standards. Yet there is stasis within the Labour party at the moment — apart from the call by Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who himself admitted he has no rule in changing the UK leader, for Starmer to resign. Sure, there is a structural problem: the possible candidates are waiting for the result of inquiries. Angela Rayner hasn’t had resolution of an HMRC inquiry; others await the full publication of correspondence between Peter Mandelson and ministers. Burnham, the single most popular figure in Labour politics, is marooned outside the House of Commons having been barred from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election in McSweeney’s last backroom move to protect his boss. Burnham’s candidacy in that contest would have given a voice to voters and a potential vehicle for change for the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). So this is currently a Mexican stand-off in which no-one can pull a trigger.

Yet, as the former Labour Cabinet minister Tony Benn used to say, what matters most are not personalities but issues. The real question for anyone who wants to replace Starmer is what policy platform would restore Labour’s popularity to 25% — which would make it competitive with Reform UK. In reality, there are two options: focus on delivery or focus on change. The first of these, currently being pursued by the Starmer government as the “cost-of-living agenda”, is a cul-de-sac. Sadly, it is the path and error of the technocrat. It is more a tactic than a strategy, and it rests on making a series of small, incremental changes in the hope that those will accumulate into a meaningful difference. 

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The problem is that the cost of living never goes down, not least because, since the Thirties, politicians and economists have been conscious of the massive danger of deflation. So, if prices won’t go down, what to do? The Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, has popularized the term “Affordability”. The concept brings increased spending power into the calculation — with more of that then things are more affordable. The record rise in the minimum wage is part of that, as is the reality of rent controls coming in through strengthening renters’ rights in England.

That’s why Labour’s second option — focusing on change, rather than delivery — is the real contest. Just look at the rise of insurgent parties in the UK. On the Left, there are the Greens, and on the Right there is Reform UK — both fueled by voters who distrust big business, believe the system isn’t working, and have lost trust in the traditional parties. 

Given these circumstances, the Labour Party needs a new political economy. Without a theory of how to allocate revenue and capital fairly, who the winners and losers are, and who their enemy is, changing leaders is pointless. That new political economy requires obeying the first law of politics — the voters are never wrong, so act on their worries. Yes, they complain about the cost of living, but the biggest element of that is housing — and housebuilding has fallen catastrophically. The only entity that can build at speed and scale is the government — so it is time for half a million council houses built on government land. The biggest existential fear for workers is the advance of AI, while for parents it’s the impact of Big Teach on their kids’ futures. For Labour, the natural party of intervention, that means swift and tough regulation.

Above all else, the party must apologize. Admit that Labour lost its way. None of its mistakes — the reasons it has lost support — were in the manifesto. Cutting winter fuel payments, attacking social security for people with disabilities, appointing the wrong ambassador — those were all done in government. Return to the manifesto and build a plan to implement big changes that will be visible and will be felt day by day, month by month, over the remaining years of the parliament. That landslide majority could still come in handy, if Labour can find a true social democratic purpose. Then there may be a Chief of Staff in Downing Street whose name we don’t need to know.

He was right. One of the earliest attempted Cabinet revolts of the New Labour period was over the Millennium Dome. During a Cabinet meeting chaired by Prescott while Blair was travelling, speaker after speaker raised doubts about the costs, the content and the viability of the scheme assuming that the question of whether to go ahead was an open one. It wasn’t.

As Deputy Prime Minister, and Chair of Cabinet, it fell to Prescott to sum up. Adopting full Labour conference mode — where traditionally he made the closing speech — he delivered a magnificent peroration, circuitous and full of digressions but successfully summarising the Cabinet as being in full agreement with the Dome proceeding. This was Prescott doing what he did best: loyally holding a position, fixing a problem and smoothing over differences with his own inimitable rhetoric.

Not really smooth enough, though, for the modern televisual era, he was an “authentic” politician before that became a populist calling card. When he was egged during a general election campaign, he immediately swung a professional-looking punch at the demonstrator. Referring to the incident, Blair said: “John is John”, adding, “I’m lucky to have him as my deputy”. The voters got it. And they would today: Prescott would be the ideal figure to take on Nigel Farage and the Reform party.

Prescott was a giant figure in the modern Labour Party with a biography that came from a different era. The son of a railwayman, he left school at 15 to become a hotel porter, where his talent was recognised. He was sent to catering college, where, characteristically, he ended up being sacked in a dispute about pay and conditions. In 1955, he joined the Merchant Navy where he became an activist for the National Union of Seamen (NUS). For John, the fight for social justice, and for socialism, almost always had a strongly personal element. It gave him the passion that powered his career.

He channelled his radicalism into education when he went to Ruskin College in Oxford, where he stayed active in the union and was a key figure in the 1966 NUS strike that led the Wilson government to declare a state of emergency. Despite being at loggerheads with the government on this issue, Prescott’s talents were recognised by the Labour Party and in 1970 he was elected MP for Kingston upon Hull East, which he represented for 40 years.

Always on the Left, there was a pragmatism to Prescott that tempered his ideology. Initially a passionate supporter of Michael Foot for leader, Prescott admitted in his autobiography, Pulling No Punches, that he realised early on in the leadership that he had been mistaken. He may have been a great man, but Foot was “not a party leader”.

Left pragmatism became Prescott’s hallmark as he rose through the ranks during the 18 long years of opposition after Margaret Thatcher’s victory in 1979. Another of his traits was his dogged loyalty to the leader. In 1993, John Smith was having trouble pushing the “one member one vote” constitutional change through Labour conference. It was a key plank of his project for modernising Labour’s links with the unions. If it failed, then Smith’s authority would have been damaged. Prescott swung in with a barnstorming speech and pulled conference on side.

This ability to rally the party and the wider movement behind reforms is what made Prescott such a significant figure. Never an ideologist for Blair and Brown’s New Labour party, nor a strategist like Peter Mandelson, Prescott was a persuader reaching the parts of the movement that others in the leadership couldn’t. He was critical to delivering Blair’s changes to the Labour Party’s historic Clause 4 — the “socialist objective” with another great Prescott speech helping it over the line.

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Alex Salmond's failed populism

By John McTernan

But his great political abilities weren’t matched with an equal track record of achievement. His super-ministry at the beginning of the New Labour government — the Department of the Environment, Transport, and the Regions was simply too large. Yet also, in key areas, he received too little political support from the centre. The failed attempt to a Regional Assembly for the North-East was partly to blame for the political status quo that led to Brexit. If the referendum had been won, the argument goes, then similar assemblies would have been established across England during the Blair and Brown years. As they matured and developed, they would have brought politics closer to voters and drained a lot of the discontent and alienation that fuelled Brexit. And also, had the Labour government put the same energy, resources and professionalism into winning the assembly referendum as the party put into winning the 1997 and 2001 general elections, then the career of Dominic Cummings might have had a different trajectory. Cummings’ success in defeating the North-East Assembly was his launchpad into political campaigning.

Nor did Prescott ever receive the full credit for his innovative policy thinking. As Shadow Transport Secretary, he was the first major Labour figure to explore public-private partnerships to invest in modernising the railways. This was his political pragmatism in action — if fiscal prudence meant a cap on public spending, then other sources had to be tapped.

His lasting legacy was probably the Decent Homes programme — the investment programme that brought England’s two million council houses up to modern standards with new bathrooms, windows and central heating. This measure transformed the quality of life for working-class families — but, in a failure characteristic of New Labour, there wasn’t enough publicity about the programme or its benefits. Blair and Brown too often preferred to redistribute by stealth. It was a missed opportunity, not just because it was a major progressive achievement that went uncelebrated but also because every ounce of Prescott’s being would have made him a superlative message carrier on this issue.

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More than anything, Prescott took politics seriously — particularly his responsibility as Deputy Leader to reduce the tensions at the top. He made regular attempts to smooth the TBGBs — as the friction between Blair and Brown was called. He would recount how he had tried to host dinners between them at Admiralty House, the Deputy Prime Minister’s official residence. “There wasn’t,” he recalled, “a full set of matching chairs for the dining room table. Gordon came in and he saw that there was a big chair and a little one — and he immediately sat in the taller one so that Tony always had to look up to him for the whole of dinner.”

Prescott may have had presence and authenticity, but he also had the most priceless political gift of all — wit. Famous for his taste for Jags — good, fast British cars — he was once asked by fellow MP Austin Mitchell “How can you drive a Jag?” “Simple, Austin!” came Prescott’s swift response “You put a key in the ignition and turn it!” As a No. 10 staffer, I was used to his gentle mockery when I covered housing and regeneration — he called us “Mekons” after the legendary Martian enemy of Dan Dare in the “Eagle” comic. And when I was Political Secretary, Prescott complained that I was being too tough on backbenchers — which was actually the job of the Whips, not me — leading to Blair passing on the complaint to me and adding his own advice: “You only have to break one of their legs, John. Not both.”

When I saw Prescott at conference, he would inevitably tell me off about one or other position I had taken on TV or social media. Though he often refused to know me. “Who the heck is John McTernan?” he once said in response to a journalist’s question. In the end, John Prescott’s bark was always worse than his bite. And his love of, and loyalty to, the Labour Party was a model to aspire to. The outpourings of warmth and affection for him today are real — and a measure of what Labour and the country have lost.

Salmond’s post-referendum career was defined by a falling-out with Nicola Sturgeon, his former deputy, and long-time protégé. The row culminated in a series of investigations, court cases, and a Scottish parliamentary inquiry. Salmond was accused of 14 counts of sexual assault and cleared in the High Court of Scotland. But though he won there, he lost in the court of public opinion. The accounts of the trial, and of Salmond’s behaviour with the women who accused him, described actions inappropriate for any public figure. His defence at trial could be summarised as: while Salmond might be a creep, he wasn’t a crook.

Both these aspects of his career pose hard questions about the nature of politics, of acceptable behaviour, and of what those in politics tolerate — and why. There is no doubt that Salmond was a formidable political operator. As a member of the 79 Group, he rethought the political strategy of the SNP from the bottom up. The group was formed after the 1979 referendum on the Scottish Assembly failed because of low turnout. The argument that the SNP should turn to the Left was given further urgency after the SNP lost nine of its 11 MPs when Margaret Thatcher swept to power. Although Salmond, and others, were expelled from their party because of their factional organisation, he returned to membership quickly and the SNP’s successful positioning as a “social democratic” government derives from this turn.

His rethinking of independence as “independence within Europe” was a similarly significant repositioning. Long before “Remain” became a political identity within UK politics, Salmond intuited that the breadth of the European Union and the openness of the European identity were an important counterbalance to the attitude that an independent Scotland would be a narrow, small nation.

A bombastic character, his wit and sense of theatre softened what could have at times come across as bullying. His greatest moment was probably when in 2007, after an indecisive election in which the SNP won one more seat than Scottish Labour, he flew into Prestonfield House in Edinburgh in a helicopter. Landing, he held a US-style press conference — podium and all — where he proclaimed a plurality of seats as a great victory, successfully brow-beating his opponents and the media into accepting his definition of reality.

This was one of his supreme skills. There is often talk in modern politics of “framing”, “messaging”, and “narrative”. But what that really describes is the power of political storytelling: a great politician defines what matters and what is irrelevant. Alex Salmond’s first administration was a minority government supported by the Scottish Conservatives. Yet that didn’t prevent the SNP from attacking Scottish Labour as “Tartan Tories”. The structuring power of political rhetoric was one of Salmond’s great powers and he mesmerised his opponents — neither Labour nor Tory governments could outplay him. Everything good in Scotland, he argued, came from the Scottish Government while everything bad was imposed by Westminster.

But lost inside that argument was the fact that it was New Labour’s devolution settlement which gave Salmond the platform to make his case — here and abroad, for he was an international figure too. It’s a settlement that has been tested by two global crises — the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and the pandemic — and proved resilient.

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There was always a darker side to Salmond, though. One senior Scottish civil servant told me that “He would never be mistaken for a nice man”. The rumours about his treatment of female staff didn’t surface publicly until the 2018 Scottish Government investigation into complaints, which raises an abiding question about Salmond, his party, and the broader political class, which let behaviours go unchallenged. Politics, despite advances in women’s representation to the highest level, remains a resolutely masculine profession in culture and language. And it stands apart from both public services and private companies where the language and behaviours tolerated inside politics would lead to prompt dismissal, rather than “boys will be boys” shrugs.

Nicola Sturgeon’s words on Alex Salmond’s sudden and shocking death are typically thoughtful: “Obviously, I cannot pretend that the events of the past few years which led to the breakdown of our relationship did not happen, and it would not be right for me to try. However, it remains the fact that for many years Alex was an incredibly significant figure in my life, He was my mentor, and for more than a decade we formed one of the most successful partnerships in UK politics.”

All true, and yet there is a reason that Salmond took Scotland so close to independence. He was a harbinger of the new populist style in politics — one led today by Nigel Farage in the UK, Marine Le Pen in France, and Donald Trump in the United States. It is in Trump — or in Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi — that one finds the match for Alex Salmond’s complex and flawed form of political leadership. It changes things, breaks things, but also reinforces a darker culture of discrimination. And while it might be true that political careers end in failure, it is also necessary that they are followed by clear-eyed scrutiny. Which means responsibility falls on all of us, myself included, who failed to ask the tough questions during the Salmond era. Charisma is important in leadership, but it should never go unquestioned. Politicians, like all of us, are all too human — voters, and history, deserve to see them in the round.

But slowly and decisively, silence has fallen on the Labour Party ahead of a purported reshuffle. Within its ranks, there seems to be a dogged determination to win. Unity of will doesn’t guarantee anything in a general election, but its opposite, disunity, is political death — as backbench Tory MPs are likely to see in the coming by-elections.

Of course, political energy has to go somewhere, and with Labour looking increasingly likely to be at least the largest party in the Commons after the next election, all the spinning is going into self-promotion to secure, or retain, a post in Keir Starmer’s Shadow Cabinet. With a Labour opinion-poll lead over the Tories that in recent weeks has been between 16 and 25 points, it would be a “Golden Ticket”.

Hence the flurry of earnest speculation about which senior Labour figures could be sacked or sidelined in the coming weeks. When political editors are asked, “So, what is Keir Starmer going to do?”, the only honest answer is: “Nobody knows.” For, in contrast to most other modern Labour leaders, Starmer does not provide a running commentary to the Westminster Lobby; nor does he have a newspaper columnist who serves as “court reporter”. Starmer stays silent, acts and then moves on.

Will there be a reshuffle? We don’t know. Should there be one? Absolutely. This is the last sensible moment before the election — it’s now or never. 

There are clear rules Starmer should follow. First, a reshuffle must have a clear political purpose — or don’t do it. This is not a technical matter; it’s a demonstration of leadership. Previous reshuffles have reflected Starmer’s relative strength as leader, needing to balance factions in both the Parliamentary Labour Party and the movement as a whole. It is, after all, less than two years since the UK’s Covid “Freedom Day”, when it seemed as though Boris Johnson would carry politics before him for the rest of the decade. Yet Starmer is now on his third prime minister. There have been so many Tory reshuffles and departmental reorganisations since the 2019 general election that Labour’s Shadow Cabinet no longer “shadows” the government.

Given this Conservative chaos, it would be pointless for Labour to precisely match the current machinery of government. What Starmer needs is to show who would be sitting around the Cabinet table if he were to win the next election — and they need to be ready in post immediately. The sooner the reshuffle is done, the longer the new team will have to read into their brief, and to prepare for their autumn speeches. This October’s Labour Party conference is likely to be the last one before the general election, so it is the best chance to showcase a government-in-waiting. Specific policies can wait, but personalities show intent.

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Second, Starmer should reward performance and sideline those who haven’t made the grade; this is no time for passengers. The benefit of presiding over a predicted landslide is that it yields absolute authority for the leader. Such moments are rare in politics, and Starmer should seize his and clear out the Shadow Cabinet.

First, he must shrink it to 22, the size of the actual Cabinet. Rampant “shadflation” means that 30 politicians are currently in the Shadow Cabinet, a size created by the evasion of hard choices. It’s time to make them. There is no longer a Department for International Development, and Starmer should be clear it isn’t coming back. The incumbent Shadow Minister, Preet Gill should, therefore, be the first to go.

The fashion, created by David Cameron, of “ministers attending Cabinet”, without being members of Cabinet, should be avoided. You are either in or out; there can be no halfway house. Which will leave up to six of Starmer’s frontbench out of a job.

This slimming-down will help with some of the politics, too. It is visible from the Moon that Dr Rosena Allin-Khan, Shadow Minister for Minister for Mental Health, disagrees with her boss, Wes Streeting, about health policy. As he is one of the strongest of Labour’s frontbench performers, he isn’t moving. So Rosena has to go.

Elsewhere, there are easier decisions for Starmer to make, such as keeping the strong performers where they are: Rachel Reeves, David Lammy and Yvette Cooper. In the wider ranks, John Healey has made Defence his own – his embrace of Nato has eliminated memories of the Corbyn years; Jim McMahon has been instrumental in making the politics of the water industry a vote-winner; and Shadow Leader of the House, Thangam Debbonaire, has become the quintessential (and essential) “Minister for the Today Programme”. Ed Miliband has earned his place be doing the rarest of things: becoming the ex-leader you actually want in your team because his government experience and credentials are a useful bridge to young and green voters.

But not all should have prizes. To promote talent, vacancies must be created, and politics should drive that, too. AI is transforming everything — but what has Labour had to say about this revolutionary moment? The debate ought to be driven by the Shadow Secretary of State for DCMS, but it hasn’t been — so Lucy Powell has to make way for a new appointment.

Similarly, when the justice system is in freefall and undermining public trust in law and order, the last thing Labour needs is a Shadow Justice Secretary trying to ramp up the Government’s ridiculous war on drugs. Steve Reed should be replaced by a politician who can consistently keep in voters’ minds the crisis in the Courts that undermines law enforcement. And amid a poverty crisis caused by the combination of cost-of-living pressures and cruel welfare policies, Labour needs a crusader, not a technician — so Jonathan Ashworth should make way for someone new. While all three are talented politicians, in opposition, it is “Shadow Cabinet or bust”. 

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That still leaves what one might call the “Prescott challenge” — how to properly use the huge talents of a deputy leader who is a superb politician and the perfect counterpoint to the party leader. It is absurd to believe that Angela Rayner should merely be Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster — but the uneasy settlement of the last reshuffle, which left her holding down a sheaf of Shadow Ministerial posts, cannot last into government. Creating a mega-department for John Prescott wasn’t the right answer in 1997, and should be avoided this time round. Rayner’s radicalism, rooted equally in her working-class background and her Left-wing politics, would bring real edge to the Justice Department, or the Work and Pensions brief. 

But it will surely need to be resolved privately between Angela and Keir, in a modern-day equivalent of the 1994 Granita deal, struck in an Islington restaurant, which formalised the working relationship between Blair and Brown. 

Third, promote talent. New faces and new voices will bring new energy and get cut-through. When voters say that they don’t know what Labour stands for, they don’t want hundreds more pages of policy documents, they want definition. Given the state of the economy and the public finances — as well as Shadow Chief Secretary Pat McFadden’s tight control over spending commitments — Labour can’t spend its way into the public mind. It needs to think its way there instead.

The two most creative thinkers on the wider shadow frontbench are Liz Kendall and Alison McGovern. Kendall is perhaps best-remembered for her 2015 leadership bid, in which she was beaten into fourth place of four — but she also set the terms for the politics that have catapulted Labour to its current poll lead. When Kendall said “country first, party second”, it cost her the votes of the Left-leaning Labour membership, but it helped her frame the core tenets of Starmerism. And as Shadow Social Care Minister, she has avoided the siren call of expensive and pointless nationalising in favour of a focus on raising standards and investing in the workforce. 

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Alison McGovern, meanwhile, has played an equally significant role in making Labour electable again. As chair of the centre-left political faction and think-tank Progress (now Progressive Britain), she shepherded moderate policies, politics and activists through the Corbyn years so that there was a reserve army to support Starmer when elected leader. As the Shadow Minister for Employment, she has a track record of innovative thinking: her most recent plan, to devolve job centres to local councils, would prove more effective than the status quo without costing more.

Finally, reshuffles are about two types of people. The first are your MPs — and when I say it pays to remember them, I mean that literally. There was a reshuffle during my time at No. 10 when a minister lost their job because their name was on a piece of paper that had fallen off the table and someone else’s was slotted in its place. The reality is that a reshuffle is rarely only one move; you must have the whole plan in full detail before you announce the headline parts. Nobody must be forgotten.

The second group of people are, of course, the voters. If Labour’s reshuffle is done right, the public will take notice of the new faces on the frontbench. Once he has his best team in place, the next challenge for Starmer will be sending them around the country to promote the party’s pledges and policies. Politics is a retail business, and sales are best done face to face — but you don’t need to wait for a general election to seal the deal with the British people.

These were not cheap attempts to exploit the weakness of the Conservatives during the 49 days of Trussonomics, but part of a sustained strategy to plunder Thatcher’s legacy. In a major speech on crime last month, Starmer quoted her directly: “The rule of law is the foundation for everything. Margaret Thatcher called it the ‘first duty of government’. She was right.” Predictably, these last three words deeply offended the Labour Left. The fury on social media was nearly as great as when he banned Jeremy Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate at the next election. In both cases the outrage was the point. What better way to prove you are a different sort of leader from Corbyn than to follow Tony Blair and admit that Thatcher got some things right?

But 10 years after Thatcher’s death, Starmer could, and should, go further — and learn other lessons from her success. The first is the most straightforward: know your enemy, identify them, and fight them on your own terms at a time of your choosing. Politics, in Boris Pasternak’s words “is not a walk across an open field”. People — bad people, and vested interests — want to stop you. And while you can’t avoid conflict, you can be prepared for it.

Labour can’t afford to just sit back and watch the Government fall into disarray; it needs to put them in the wrong and keep them there. Margaret Thatcher used the “Winter of Discontent” as a stick to beat Labour for a decade, through a combination of rhetorical reminders and legislative action that weakened the unions. Today, Starmer and his team need to constantly remind voters that the pain they are currently feeling over the cost of living and the collapse of basic standards in policing, the NHS and public transport are Tory failures. This is the theory behind Labour’s new wave of attack ads. Put your enemy in the wrong and keep them there. Are Labour’s social media ads fair? Perhaps not. Are they effective in framing the conversation? Absolutely. Just as Thatcher used Saatchi and Saatchi and brought the modern techniques of marketing and advertising into politics, so Starmer’s team are using modern channels to tie the Tory failure on crime to Sunak.

Less straightforward, but more important, is the need for Starmer to echo Thatcher’s commitment to a fixed world view. For many on the Left and Right, Thatcher was a divisive figure — yet she also commanded a grudging respect. This could be summed up in the phrase: “Whatever you think about her, you always know what she’s going to do.” Decisiveness is a powerful asset for a leader. It is not simply that, in the words of Pierre Medes-France, “to govern is to choose” — nor is it that drift, dither and indecision is weak. Rather, the power of decisiveness stems from the power of decisions to create a framework and a filter that serve as a test for any policy proposals. When David Willetts ran the No. 10 Policy Unit for Thatcher, he made his team ask a simple question of any new policies: “Is there a more market-oriented solution?” And there invariably was. Similarly, New Labour had its own — less ideological, but appropriately pragmatic — test: “What matters is what works.”

To succeed, Starmer needs his own framing test. And this requires him to look at the horizon. Thatcher and Blair both addressed the fundamental questions of their time. For Thatcher, it was the sclerotic economy; for Blair, it was the need to rebuild public services. Right now, the cost of living is dominating lives, and tackling it is urgent, but it will pass through the economy in the coming years. For Starmer, his office-defining challenge will be climate change. Labour has already placed its big spending bet on decarbonising the economy — £28 billion a year of investment. But if Starmer wants this to actually happen, his No. 10 operation has to keep asking: “Does this get us to Net Zero faster?”

Hugo Young called his magisterial study of Thatcher One Of Us, after the question she asked about senior appointments. Are they “one of us?” Are they going to be part of the project? One of the hardest things in politics is achieving genuine change. And as so often, Machiavelli got it right: nothing is more difficult than “to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things”, since a new leader “has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new”. At a dinner some years ago, Lord Howell, who had been a Cabinet minister in the first Thatcher administration, turned to me and said: “When you were Tony Blair’s Political Secretary, I bet you had the same problems as we did.” I expressed some confusion, so he clarified. “I bet you never had enough Blairites. We never had enough Thatcherites. We had to fight all the time to make the changes we needed to make. We were always outnumbered.” “Yep! Same.”

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By Richard Vinen

Here is Starmer’s third lesson. He must surround himself with true believers and get a grip on the machine from the outset. To borrow Dominic Cummings’s phrase, that means a “hard rain”. The civil service and system of public appointments have been thoroughly politicised. It is not merely the well-publicised furore about the Chair of the BBC — it’s the same across all public appointments, from the Charity Commission to NHS boards. Some old-fashioned voices are already calling for Labour to depoliticise public appointments if they get in, but these should be ignored for the sirens they are. Change needs change-makers, and Starmer will need an army of them. From health to crime to energy, reform as fundamental as Thatcher’s transformation of public services is needed. And while parachuting in allies may make for crude politics, it also makes for success.

Finally, Starmer can also gain some solace from the example of Thatcher. Opinion polls and focus groups consistently find Sunak more “prime ministerial”. The same was true in the Seventies, when Jim Callaghan routinely outpolled Thatcher. But it didn’t matter. As Callaghan observed: “There are times, perhaps once every 30 years, when there is a sea-change in politics. It then does not matter what you say or what you do. There is a shift in what the public wants and what it approves of.” The brute reality is that Prime Ministers invariably look more prime ministerial than opposition leaders because they have the trappings of office. As soon as an election is called next year, those trappings will swiftly disappear.

And when that inevitably happens, Starmer will face a choice. By then, Sunak’s Conservative Party will have evacuated the ground bestowed on it by Thatcher. Will Labour be bold enough to step in and seize it?

The small boats coming in increasing numbers across the Channel could similarly become the image of the collapse of the authority of Rishi Sunak’s government — if Keir Starmer is willing to learn lessons from Australia, and in particular Tony Abbott’s relentless assaults.

Politics is a contact sport. Effective oppositions put their opponents in the wrong — and keep them there by returning to the attack again and again. This normally starts with framing. Australian Liberal Prime Minister John Howard defined the debate about refugees when he said that “we will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”. Australian Labor never found a way to make the humanitarian needs of refugees sound appealing — it just sounded like open borders.

There is a Maslowian hierarchy to the demands voters make of politicians. At the bottom is security, in the middle is competence and delivery of public services — and it is only when these fulfilled that voters are willing to listen to political parties’ visions of the future. Put bluntly, the most effective attack the Labour frontbench can make on Rishi Sunak’s government is to say again and again that the Tories have lost control of our borders.

This is not a time for subtlety; whatever “Stop the boats!” lacks in elegance, it gains in punchiness. This is the second lesson that Starmer needs to learn from Tony Abbott — winning from opposition isn’t pretty, but it can be simple. Two or three-word slogans can sum up an attack. They should simplify more detailed or complex arguments rather than be simplistic, but they must be instantly understandable.

It’s fortunate, then, that the solution to tackling the small boats crisis is relatively straightforward. Shift processing from the UK to France, so asylum seekers don’t need to risk the crossing. Speed up the processing of claims, which will lead to quick deportations and cut the credibility of the people smugglers. At the same time, launch a war of intelligence and policing against these gangs, with the support of the governments of the countries they operate from and through. This last part is particularly difficult for the Conservative government to achieve with France because of the suspicion, and at times hostility, their ministers and MPs have shown to us since Brexit. Like most good plans, this will take time to arrange, so Labour needs a clear strap-line.

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By Shahar Hameiri

The template Tony Abbott successfully copied was Michael Howard’s contract with the country in the 2005 UK general election: “More police. Cleaner hospitals. Lower taxes. School discipline. Lower immigration.” Few voters read political manifestos. When they complain in focus groups that they don’t know enough about Labour’s policies, they don’t mean they would like to read a 200-page manifesto. What they want is the “retail offer” — the pledges that set out simply and clearly the difference that Labour will make for them directly and personally. What does Labour mean for the NHS? Less waiting. And for crime? More police. For schools? Smaller classes. Voters need to know why Labour is the answer — and to which questions.

Since Labour conference, Starmer’s team have brought a sharpness to his language and performance. This is largely thanks to the recently appointed speechwriter Alan Lockey, the return to frontline politics of experienced Blair strategist Peter Hyman, and the newly promoted Executive Director of Policy Stuart Ingham (who is probably the most important political figure you’ve never heard of). Their success shows the importance of having competent wordsmiths on the books. A similar approach needs to turn the insights of Starmer’s Director of Strategy Deborah Mattinson’s research into persuasive soundbites that are repeated again, and again, and again.

This is where the final thing on Starmer’s shopping list comes in: a frontbench of committed campaigners who are convincing message carriers. If there were an inspectorate for political communication, there would clearly be a number of Labour frontbenchers in special measures. Shadow Justice Secretary Steve Reed, for one, seems to have vanished without trace in his portfolio. And at DDCMS, Lucy Powell has been unable to punish the Government for failing to protect children by weakening or even failing to pass the Online Safety Bill. Opposition is never a time to carry passengers; the task is now to present Labour as an alternative government. According to Sir John Curtice, Labour’s regular poll leads mean that a clear majority is now a real prospect.

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What does Keir Starmer stand for?

By John McTernan

It’s time, then, for Starmer to pick the team who will be his first Cabinet after he wins the next election. He will never be stronger than he is now. Labour regularly polls around 50% — that means one in two voters you meet are thinking of voting Labour. The Shadow Cabinet needs to be his choice of the talent that can seal the deal with the voters. Experienced Labour hands, veterans of the New Labour days, note that Starmer campaigns best with strong women politicians; he looks and sounds more relaxed and connects with the public more deeply. So, he needs to be out and about with Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Deputy Leader Angela Rayner. They are his Gordon Brown and John Prescott, and he should remember how well surrounding himself with very strong and very different politicians worked for Tony Blair. Starmer now has talented female frontbenchers such as former leadership contender Liz Kendall, who has returned from maternity leave, and Merseyside campaigner Alison McGovern. Both would strengthen the Shadow Cabinet by replacing stale, male, and pale underperformers.

Hunger for office is the key. Oppositions can tear down a government, but they need to get up every day wanting to do that. Starmer is spoiled for targets. If it’s not energy prices driving up the cost of living, it’s higher interest rates raising mortgage repayments. If it’s not NHS waiting lists lengthening, it’s the crime rate rising and police detection falling. And yet, too often the government successfully projects the narrative that they are grappling with events out of their control, when everything going wrong is the consequence of a decision made by one of the five Tory Prime Ministers over the last six years. If he’s going to win, Starmer needs to put down his toy gun and show the bludgeoning skills of successful opposition.

Which means the jumpiness from No. 10 wasn’t necessary; if the numbers had been done properly, so much panic and disarray could have been avoided. No chaos over whether it was a confidence vote. No shouting and manhandling of MPs being hustled and hassled through the lobby. No resignation and “unresignation” of the Chief Whip and the Deputy Chief Whip. And no panicked press office clarification messaged at WhatsApp at 1:30am.

It was this whirling vortex of panic that finally sank Liz Truss. And it was avoidable. As in so many crises it was a lack of accurate information that fed the ill-judged and ultimately disastrous decisions. The final 48 hours of Liz Truss’s leadership of the Conservative party are a lesson for everyone in politics.

The wiring of politics was exposed. The whips are meant to be anonymous. Going about quietly, as one great Labour whip described it to me when I was Tony Blair’s Political Secretary: “Just doing the Lord’s work, John, just doing the Lord’s work!” So, when Craig Whittaker, the Deputy Chief whip was quoted as resigning shouting: “I am fucking furious and I don’t give a fuck anymore”, there was something transgressive about not just the language but the glimpse into the machinery.

There’s a lot of mystique about the Whip’s office — headed by the “Chief”, as the Chief Whip is familiarly known. There’s talk of little “black books” and dark secrets held over recalcitrant backbenchers. But as with the spycraft of recruiting informers and double agents, blackmail is a very inefficient way of gaining control over people. To start with, they will always deeply resent you. Far better to align your disciplinary strictures with MPs’ needs and wants. For instance, one of the most powerful things whips do is allocate accommodation. The best offices are in short supply and in the past even offices were scarce — in the Eighties, a newly elected Ken Livingstone found himself working for months on a desk crammed into a corridor. There are carrots as well as sticks — one is foreign travel. Permission from the whips is needed for going on select committee fact-finding missions. Holding that over the colleagues is one of the forms of soft power used by the Chief.

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By Dominic Sandbrook

But the authority the whips have to impose discipline derives ultimately from the power and the credibility of the Prime Minister they serve. Right until the very end of a PM’s tenure, the whips will deliver for them. But there’s a law of diminishing returns, as has been made clear this week.

The next Prime Minister will have to impose their authority through the machine they inherit. Whether it’s Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt, or even Boris Johnson redux, they face a fundamental challenge: rebellion can become addictive. As the fifth PM in just over six years, they will no doubt have a reshuffle. While patronage is initially a huge power for No. 10 — both the actual appointments and the promise of future preferment — it suffers from diminishing returns. Every new Cabinet and ministerial team creates losers as well as winners. When there have been a lot of reshuffles, it can easily come to the point where the number of former ministers is larger than the government’s majority. And the most frustrating thing about former ministers is that when they are on the backbenches, they suddenly discover the virtue of freedom of conscience. When I was Tony Blair’s Political Secretary we had only a small group of former ministers we called the “non-embittered former ministers” who we could rely on to support the government through thick and thin. The others were listening to Gordon Brown’s promises. As one of my colleagues quipped: “There will be six Chancellors in Gordon’s first Cabinet judging by what he’s promised.”

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Why Truss's gamble failed

By Aris Roussinos

The new No. 10 operation will need to learn from the failures over the past 45 days, as well as the final 48 hours. Almost lost among so many stories this week was the suspension of Liz Truss’s Acting Head of Communications Jason Stein. Allegedly authorised by the then Prime Minister, Stein called Michael Gove a “sadist” and described Sajid Javid as “shit”. Good advisers accurately reflect their politicians, and do their bidding. Great advisers know they are paid to say no to their bosses, and to leave the personal politics to the politicians.

The new administration will have a short window in which to get it right. The police talk about the golden hour in investigations when vital evidence can be located or lost. Similarly, there’s a brief golden period when a new Prime Minister can have a reset. A broad-based Cabinet that unifies the party. A clear and straightforward discussion of the hard choices and trade-offs required for budget-repair, and no shrinking from accepting from the Conservative party’s responsibility for the economic and financial challenges. For this is no longer about winning a historic fifth term; it is about trying to keep the country in the best possible shape until the next election. When facing defeat, political parties often talk about “saving the furniture”. It’s time for the Conservative party to salvage some dignity.

That moment is upon No 10 now — with a brutal twist. Normally it is possible to blame external circumstances, often a political rival ruthlessly splitting the party to seize the crown, reckless of the damage caused.

This time it is entirely a situation of the Prime Minister’s making. It is her policies, the ones she set out in her leadership campaign, which have been fully implemented and more. It is her Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, who spooked the markets by sacking his Permanent Secretary, the most senior civil servant in the Treasury; preventing the independent Office for Budget Responsibility, a Tory creation, from publishing forecasts of the Government’s “mini-budget”; and wanting to abolish the top rate of income tax, on top of ending the cap on bankers’ bonuses. Three strikes and Kwarteng was out.

Is there a way through? Very possibly. Truss is facing the ultimate gang who couldn’t shoot straight. The parliamentary Conservative party is often called the most sophisticated electorate in the world — a phrase which is only true if you construe “sophisticated” according to the Elizabethan meaning of the word. These are the MPs who chose Theresa May, who lost a 20-point lead and a majority in an election against Jeremy Corbyn. They then plumped for Boris Johnson who governed as he has lived — as a Lord of Misrule. He became the only prime minister to have been found guilty of breaking the law — rules for which he had legislated, but in character had clearly failed to read.

This most “sophisticated” electorate has surpassed itself with a free market leader who has now been judged freely by those very markets. As a great Strathclyde Regional Council leader once said to me, speaking of his hundred strong Labour group of councillors: “Ah wouldnae let them walk my dog round the block. And I don’t have a dog.”

If, now, the appointment of Jeremy Hunt, a former Cabinet minister with no Treasury experience who fell out of the Tory leadership in the first round, is being hailed as a stroke of Machiavellian genius, perhaps it is possible to discern a faint and very narrow path to victory for the Prime Minister — or at least to survival, which feels like the same thing.

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Liz Truss makes the case for Labour

By John McTernan

Time, as Sheryl Sandberg says, to lean in. Own the pivot; it is not, emphatically, a U-turn. Double down. Declare that you are governing in the national interest. Show it. Raise VAT at the same time as raising benefits in line with inflation. Throw in a new Deficit Repayment levy of 5% for earners over £100,000. Dare Labour to oppose such compassionate conservatism. Tighten belts by moving capital spending to the Right rather than cancelling any projects. Day by day, get to the end of the week, the end of the month, then Christmas. Then the energy package starts to kick in and reduce the rate of inflation.

Of course, politics doesn’t take place only in a government. Already, like “Snakes on a Plane”, letter writers are coiling into view. And plotters are briefing the lobby. There are so many schemes swirling around but they all amount to one proposition: replacing the Prime Minister without an election. The number of names being floated suggests one single problem — when you are looking for a unity candidate it is the unity which is necessary not the candidate. And Tory plotters face not only an immovable object — Prime Minister Truss — but also an irresistible force — the ambition of Suella Braverman. Such ideologically divided parties heal only slowly, and over a long period in opposition.

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Is Truss the worst PM in history?

By Dominic Sandbrook

But what about the Opposition? Says no one. Ever. The bitter truth of the UK’s first-past-the-post system is that while the Government looks rudderless, the Tory party has a working majority of 69 and can do what it likes until it no longer has that majority. Which could be as far off as 2025, given the maximum permissible time this parliament could run. And everyone, including the Opposition, knows this. The action is with the Government and even if it is a car crash everyone driving past is slowing down and gazing in a mixture of awe and horror.

To get any cut through, Labour needs to change gear and get edgier. This is a tough ask. Not just because being showy is something that neither Keir Starmer nor Rachel Reeves, his Shadow Chancellor, are comfortable with. But also because as the alternative government, they too have to be careful not to spook the markets or the voters. Because while more than 50% in a dozen polls does suggest a settled will, it also means that Labour’s support is so broad it goes deeply into voters who are far from the unionised, statist, tax and spend heart of the party. This is a fragile coalition that should be nurtured — not confronted.

Time, then, for some creative campaigning. Labour needs to show, not tell; it must demonstrate it is a new broad coalition by co-opting public figures like Jamie Oliver. His passionate campaign for extending free school meals is making waves — appoint him to head a Food and Healthy Eating Commission. Oppositions can be fleet-footed, after all, they aren’t running anything. Starmer should capitalise on that to exploit slips by the Government where they can become symbols of how Labour occupies the middle ground.

If the Government spurns plans for an information campaign, the Labour should bring the TUC and Age UK together to run one. When the Government abandons smoking cessation programmes, Labour should bring its digital campaigners together with all the medical unions and volunteers from the creative industries to generate an innovative campaign. Don’t just look like the alternative government, act like it too.

High-minded campaigns should be matched by low politics too. Find every opportunity to use parliamentary votes to defeat the government — or use the threat of defeat to paralyse them. Too scared to lose votes, the Government will try not to legislate and create a Zombie parliament. But Labour should be chipping away at the Tory majority, looking for people to cross the floor. All its MPs should be on Defection Watch — and any Tory MPs who switch sides should be promised and given a safe seat. (Though with Labour on current polling, just being allowed to be the Labour candidate in your own seat would probably work for many.)

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How powerful is Liz Truss?

By Terry Eagleton

Everything has to be about image, change and momentum. Most of all for Keir Starmer, who must spend almost all of his time on the road — selling his policies and himself. It’s important that the whole country understands “green growth” means reindustrialisation and jobs, jobs, jobs. And they also need to see that Keir likes a beer, loves football and will actually listen to them.

Time is always the most precious commodity in politics — you need it to change perceptions, or to heal wounds. And time is moving very differently for Starmer and Truss right now. The Opposition leader needs events to speed up, the Prime Minister needs them to slow down.

The news is mixed for Liz Truss this morning. The actions of the Government are decisive and calming: more tax cuts from the mini-budget reversed and a statement from the new Chancellor in the House. This will calm the markets, but not the parliamentary Conservative Party. The backbenches are restless and getting more febrile, and WhatsApp makes spreading rumours to each other and to journalists so much easier and faster. This is why it is reported that Tory MPs believe the Prime Minister has to go — “it’s when not if” — but remain unclear what mechanism can be used.

Government is often described as a marathon not a sprint; for Liz Truss this week is a marathon of sprints to stay ahead of the mob.

It was Mario Cuomo who said that politicians “campaign in poetry, but govern in prose”. Truss’s speech was confirmation that while she campaigned in prose, she is committed to governing in boilerplate. All the political clichés were there: “hard choices”; “the status quo is not an option”; “grow the pie”; “I get it”; “tough times”, and the hoary old favourite “on your side”, clunkily delivered as “on their side”. The last was the giveaway: this wasn’t a speech aimed at the country but at the conference hall. The audience, even though it was bulked out with passing randoms because of the rail strike, was willing Truss on.

And she gave the hall what they wanted — her greatest hits. Deregulation. Lower taxes. Higher defence spending. An attack on Putin. An attack on the enemies within: “They taxi from north London townhouses to the BBC studio to dismiss anyone challenging the status quo. From broadcast to podcast, they peddle the same old answers.” But there was no substance. None of the “hard choices” were specified or stepped out. Why haven’t houses “been built where they are needed and wanted”? What are the “barriers to growth” that will be lifted?

It was a short speech, lacking the tour d’horizon that is normally central to a leader’s address. It was one which raised questions without answering them. It plagiarised Keir Starmer – when the Prime Minister said “I have three priorities for our economy: growth, growth and growth”, she was shamelessly lifting from the Labour leader who, in July, had said “We need three things: growth, growth, growth”.

More substantially, she trebled down on her Chancellor’s “mini-Budget” — justifying it as a response to the “drift and delay” she had inherited, though failing to mention that the Tories have run Britain for the last 12 years, and that she had been in the Cabinet for three-quarters of that time. Truss left her audience in no doubt that she was appalled by her government having to levy the “highest tax burden that our country had had for 70 years”, but was apparently unable to name who was responsible for these punitive levels of taxation.

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Is this the end for Liz Truss?

By James Sean Dickson

The classic illustration of the Yiddish word “chutzpah” used to be the man who murdered his mother and father and then threw himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan. The Prime Minister, a self-avowed fan of Margaret Thatcher, surely supplanted him when she talked about the effects of a failed economy: “I know what it is like to live somewhere that isn’t feeling the benefits of economic growth. I grew up in Paisley and in Leeds in the Eighties and Nineties. I have seen the boarded-up shops. I have seen people left with no hope turning to drugs. I have seen families struggling to put food on the table.” Never has an attack on Thatcherism been so roundly supported by Tory conference.

Yet in a sense, Truss has learned the crucial lessons of Boris Johnson’s leadership: that not only has there been an integration of politics and celebrity, but that the narrative forms of soap opera also now frame politics. Politicians can, like the stars of daytime soaps, live in a perpetual present; what they said yesterday has no relevance to what they said today and what they will say tomorrow. Character isn’t fate — it’s reinvented daily.

The difficulty is that the bond markets don’t take such a post-modern view. They price uncertainty though long-term gilts, and it trickles down to wallets and handbags across the UK through mortgage payments. In her conference round of interviews, the Prime Minister responded by saying that interest rates are rising globally and, anyway, they are a matter for the Bank of England rather than the government.

It’s a view. But it seems unlikely that Andrew Bailey will be cursed over breakfast tables rather than Liz Truss. If, as is likely, the increases in mortgage repayments are at least £200 a month, then those costs will dwarf the financial support given to households by the energy price cap. “Black Tuesday” — when so many mortgages were simply withdrawn from the market — may come to loom as large in 21st-century UK politics as “Black Wednesday” did at the end of the last century. And with the same effect.

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Has Liz Truss trapped Labour?

By John McTernan

It is often said, not least on the Left, that the Labour Party is used to spending long periods in opposition. There were four election defeats before New Labour were elected in 1997; there have been four election defeats since David Cameron ousted Gordon Brown. Less frequently observed is that when the Tories lose, they also stay out of power for a while. Harold Wilson beat Ted Heath in four of the five general elections they fought. Tony Blair won three terms in a row. Tory defeats, though less frequent, are no less devastating. With Labour poll leads ranging from 33% across the country to 38% in the battleground “Red Wall” seats, the question is not whether Starmer will be the next Labour Prime Minister, but how big his majority will be.

The longer the general election is delayed, the worse the defeat is likely to be, particularly amid the drumbeat of rising mortgages. Yet, with a working majority of 71, the Tories cannot be thrown out of office. The dream scenario whispered about at Tory conference was about a change of rules that would allow a vote of no confidence in Truss and a new leader by acclamation. Yet, with Suella Braverman describing the ditching of the higher rate tax cut as a “coup”, who can envisage a one-candidate election? And what about Boris Johnson who surely hopes for a Churchillian return?

There is a lot of ruin in a party. And it is beginning to look as though the Tories are determined to find out exactly how much there is.

This is a changed party. Starmer no longer needs to insist that his party is patriotic; he has shown it. The Union Jack has displaced the Palestinian flags brandished by conference delegates in the dark days of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership. But it is a critical time for Starmer and his party. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng have set out their government’s brutally simple approach to economics: the UK needs growth, and that can only be achieved through tax cuts and deregulation. The markets are already delivering their verdict, with the pound on the slide and inflation on the rise.

What is Labour’s answer? This is their week – the only one in the year when they can, and must, dominate the headlines with new ideas, policies and soundbites. As far as they go, this year’s slogans are passable: “A fresh start with Labour”; “A fairer, greener future”. They are well-meaning, but woolly. What the voters need to know is what’s in it for them — what is the Labour offer? How does it deliver for individuals, their families and their businesses?

The critique is clear. The Government’s “mini-budget” last week wasn’t fair; it amounts to merely throwing cash at the 1% of top earners. Labour should punch that bruise and relish the irony of a government committed to free markets being schooled by those same markets. The Party should also avoid the language of class warfare. It delights conference delegates when speakers attack Tories for supporting the rich, but this doesn’t answer the question of what Labour would do differently.

Yesterday, in her speech on the economy, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves made a decent effort of doing just that. She reclaimed the mantle of “sound money” from the Tories, attacking them for rising borrowing — including the largest single increase in government borrowing since 1972. She outlined a “green prosperity plan” that would prioritise renewable and nuclear power and free the UK from dependence on imported fossil fuels. Perhaps more strikingly, Reeves had Labour conference on its feet with her statement that Labour was now the party of economic responsibility.

But in the end, the Labour case has to be made by its Leader. More than 200 opinion polls in a row have given Labour a lead over the Conservatives; the most recent have been so commanding that they would reverse the 2019 Tory landslide and give Labour a majority. But there’s still a question mark over whether Labour’s lead is really secure. This is where Starmer must step in.

His challenge? In focus group after focus group, swing voters say they don’t know enough about him or what he stands for. His opportunity? Voters’ ignorance about Starmer means he still has time to define himself — though that is fast running out. With the Conservative government attempting a reset with their new leader, and with the mini-budget unravelling, there is the chance for him to say: “Take a second look at me, and a long hard look at her.” His conference speech has to win the attention, and then the hearts and minds of voters.

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How Labour can beat Truss

By John McTernan

As any football fan knows, the first question Starmer has to answer is: “Who are you?” There’s a simple formula political campaigners use: voters only need to know three things about a politician to understand them. Here’s what Starmer’s should be: first, he loves the NHS, which his mother devoted her working life to, and which in turn cared for her so well when she fell ill. Second, he loves football, supports Arsenal and is a nifty five-a-side player himself. And third, he likes a beer. Get that across. And repeat it. The best answer to the accusation that he is dull isn’t some worthy line about “serious times need serious people”: it’s far better to simply say: “No-one who’s been to the pub with Keir thinks he’s boring!”

These three things would colour in Starmer’s character and reassure voters. But they also need to believe in his judgement. This is harder to demonstrate in opposition, except during fights with your own party — which he has done well by suspending his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn.

To be truly seen as the alternative Prime Minister, Starmer needs to show what he stands for, and what difference he’d make in Number 10. This is the retail offer and it has to be stark and personal. Not just about how a greener future will save the planet, but how it will save you money tomorrow. Not just what the industrial plan will invest in, but what jobs you will be able to get. Not just an end to Tory tax giveaways, but what Labour’s fair taxes will mean for families.

This is the last chance Starmer has before the next General Election to showcase who Labour is, what it has to offer, and how it has changed. Last year’s post-pandemic conference dealt with his internal dilemmas, stamping Starmer’s authority on the party with rule changes. Next year’s will be the pre-election gathering, given Truss is expected to go to the country during 2024.

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Starmer can't afford to be Blair

By John McTernan

Just look how far Starmer has brought his party. In 2019, Labour suffered its worst defeat since the Thirties, yet the party is now electorally competitive. It took him just two years to achieve what it took Neil Kinnock two elections. And all this in opposition to Boris Johnson, who was the most electorally successful Tory leader for nearly 30 years and who appeared to have remade the electoral landscape by capturing Labour seats and voters. This conference — and his conference speech — has to be another turning point. The race is on. And it will not be won by being slow and steady; it will be won by flair and momentum.

Labour has shown both at conference this week, but Liz Truss has changed to Tories too. She has shown a willingness to roll the dice from her very first days in office. Sir Humphrey would have called the mini-budget “bold, very bold”. There will be more where that came from when she unveils the deregulatory side of her agenda. When that happens, Labour will also need to be bold. No opposition can afford to wait and hope for the next election to fall into their laps.

However, since Liz Truss became Prime Minister, all this intergovernmental wrangling has ground to a halt. The death of Queen Elizabeth II, and the ensuing period of mourning, was always going to disrupt government communications. But what does that mean for Truss’s new administration?

There is, of course, an argument that this is a bonus for Truss. One of the immediate challenges for any incoming Prime Minister is to stamp themselves on the public imagination as being “prime ministerial”. What better way to do that than appear with the new monarch, King Charles III, as he travels around the United Kingdom? If you can’t generate attention, you can at least gain some authority.

Yet sometimes, making the best of a bad situation isn’t enough. And Truss’s real problem is that you only get one chance to make a first impression. We know that Team Truss had a “First 100 Days” plan, which they wanted to follow with 12 months of delivery in 2023, and then finally pivot into the election year of 2024. The public would quickly get to know their new Prime Minister by her actions. As Truss reiterated throughout her leadership campaign, she gets things done.

Her recent energy price cap announcement was not a stand-alone event — it was the start of a concerted programme of reform. The intention was to follow up with necessary legislation, information for households, and details for businesses and public services. And then to move rapidly to a “fiscal event” — a “mini-Budget” in old money — where promised tax cuts could be delivered without the threat of any doom-mongering from the Office of Budget Responsibility. This concerted activity and the generous giveaways would provide a powerful sense of momentum. The Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer, would be left carping from the side lines about a package of help three-to-four times larger than the one he had proposed last month.

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How Labour can beat Truss

By John McTernan

But instead of hitting the ground running, Prime Minister Truss has hit the ground mourning. In the background there has been discussion of government policy, but it has mainly consisted of questions and criticisms around details of the energy price cap. The problem is that her full policy requires legislation, which can only be passed and debated in parliament, when it returns to full sitting in mid-October. If a week is a long time in politics, the five weeks until the House sits again is an eternity.

Now, there is some press briefing going on. The abandonment of the sugar tax, and possibly the entire government anti-obesity strategy has been floated. As has ending the cap on bonuses in the City. These give the flavour of what the 100 Days Plan must have looked like. Sir Lynton Crosby famously talks of “getting rid of the barnacles”: that before a government can campaign effectively, it needs to rid itself of unnecessary distractions. These could be unpopular policies, ungrasped nettles, or unresolved disputes, but the Queen’s death has prevented this, disrupting the Government’s momentum.

Team Truss were clearly planning for a bolder strategy — what you might call the Joe Strummer approach: Cut The Crap. The Prime Minister wants to govern as she campaigned for the leadership. Directly, clearly and simply. She has said she wants a smaller state, and Labour have taken the bait. Without waiting to see any government policy, some Labour frontbenchers have immediately attacked Truss as a Thatcherite intent on cutting public spending. That’s hard to argue in the face of the energy price cap — one of the biggest unfunded public spending commitments ever made by a UK government.

Worse, it showed that some in Labour haven’t been listening to Truss, or taking her seriously. There’s more than one way to shrink the state — and getting out of people’s lives is an effective and popular one. One of the greatest weaknesses of progressive politics is the belief that what the country is crying out for is “more government”. A large part of the fuel that drives the campaign against political correctness is the sense that government is over-reaching, interfering in bits of life where it has no place. Liz Truss wants to tap into that. She instinctively knows that most people want to look after themselves, their families and their communities without government interference.

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The other headline announcement — uncapping City bonuses — has trapped Labour too. Missing the wood for the trees, opposition frontbenchers have spluttered in outrage at policies that would benefit fat-cat bankers rather than the general public. The point, of course, is what David Cameron’s team used to call the politics of “aroma”. It is not the specific policy detail that matters; it is the sense of the overall direction. “Hugging a husky” showed a greener, more compassionate, modern Conservative party. Uncapping City bonuses shows a government committed to Go For Growth — no old-fashioned prejudices or well-meaning sacred cows will be allowed to stand in the way. The point is to grow the pie, not, as Labour want, to talk about tax and redistribution of the proceeds of growth.

Is this a risky approach? Yes. Is it a clear one? Absolutely. The trap for Labour is that they adopt the Sunak Strategy. Liz Truss’s ideas are simplified not simplistic; and as Rishi Sunak’s defeat showed, treating the new PM as a simpleton won’t win votes. Truss may not have the right answers, but she has asked the right question. Growth is the only game in town. If Truss manages to keep it on The Grid when parliament returns next month, her lost 100 days might not be fatal.

This summer has been different: politics has been on pause while Boris Johnson has partied and holidayed and the Conservative Party has been deciding who will replace him. The Labour Party is now polling so strongly that some predict they would even scrape a narrow majority if a General Election were held today — an impressive turnaround from the Tory landslide of 2019.

Truss faces an unenviable in-tray. The climate crisis is real and proximate — whether locally, where just weeks ago the London Fire Brigade had to fight more fires on one day than at any time since the Blitz, or globally, with a third of Pakistan’s land mass flooded. Meanwhile, the NHS is having a summer as bad as any winter. The Russian war in Ukraine continues and could still go nuclear.

Faced with the likelihood of a new Prime Minister fighting and failing on multiple fronts, the Labour Party could just sit back and enjoy the chaos. After all, as the saying goes: “Oppositions don’t win elections; governments lose them.” But this would be a huge error.

In unprecedented times, precedent is a poor guide to success. In August, Keir Starmer showed just how significant an opposition intervention can be by offering a simple solution to rising energy prices: don’t let them rise in the first place, and fund support for households with a windfall tax on energy companies’ bumper profits. His proposal was so popular that three in four Tory voters supported it, leaving Truss caught in a trap: ignore Labour’s policy and leave millions to suffer in poverty, or adopt it and show that Labour is driving the government agenda.

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Why Labour should fear Liz Truss

By John McTernan

This shows what should be at the heart of Labour’s strategy going into the autumn and beyond: look, sound and act like an alternative government. In this respect, Labour could do worse than study what Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party pulled off in Australia in 2013. For most of 2012, Abbott had relied on aggressive parliamentary tactics to disrupt the business of the minority Australian Labor Party (ALP) government. But in January 2013, after the long post-Christmas summer break, Abbott and his team styled themselves as the adults in the room, offering a short, crisp list of policy proposals. They looked and sounded the part, and provided a stark contrast to a divided Labor administration.

It worked then for Tony Abbott — who won a landslide victory that year — and it would work well here for Starmer. That’s why senior officials in UK Labour are now looking at the most recent Australian election and concluding that a “small target” strategy is the best way to win power, and that policy proposals are hostages to fortune. The problem is that Australian Labor beat an unpopular incumbent. In the UK, the unpopular incumbent has been removed by his own party and, if Truss uses the powers of government effectively, she is perfectly capable of being the change the country wants.

Starmer, therefore, has to propose change, using Labour’s conference at the end of the month to showcase just a few of its most popular and core policies. This would kill two birds with one stone. It would signal what Labour would do differently, while also answering the voters who tell pollsters they haven’t heard about the party’s plans. In reality, Labour has announced some 200 policies since 2019. But to cut through, these announcements need to be few and pointed: cap energy prices; insulate more homes; cut NHS waiting times; buy British; fix Brexit. These could be expanded in a pledge card, but they need to be focus-grouped to death and then stuck to. As the saying goes: “By the time you’re sick of saying it, the public are just starting to hear it.”

Critical to delivering the message is having the right team – one that can command attention and persuade. So if Shadow Cabinet members aren’t up to the task of campaigning, they should be replaced now with those who are. Starmer needs to be fielding the team who will be ministers after the next General Election — and voters need to see them early and often.

Optimism and positivity must be central to Labour’s campaign. Yet for most of the last decade, the party has been afflicted by miserabilism, as if it needs to bludgeon voters into a depression before they can bring themselves to vote Labour. Of course, it will always be tempting to lean into the vision of “Broken Britain” that is increasingly cropping up in conversations around the country. The problem is that miserabilism is paralysing — it leads to acceptance not activism. Labour’s frame must be upbeat: “There’s nothing wrong with our great country that couldn’t be sorted with a change of government.”

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None of this is to say that there is no role for negative campaigning. Voters will always tell you they hate it, but then their behaviour shows that it still affects their vote. Politics is a contact sport, so Labour needs to “punch the bruise”. Is the government hurting on an issue? Starmer’s team needs to focus on it. The cost-of-living crisis will be central, but if it were not for inflation, then the NHS would be on every front page. In normal times, the collapse of the ambulance service would lead to ministerial resignations. Labour’s health team should make that their aim. And if it weren’t for the cost-of-living and NHS crises, then the current crime wave and the failures of the police to keep the streets safe would dominate politics. A nimble and opportunist opposition should be able to make hay.

So Labour should be thankful for the wealth of material provided by Truss and Sunak during the leadership election. Starmer should exploit this by appointing a Shadow Minister for Government Splits whose job would be to use and re-use the best material from the campaign and relentlessly publicise it on social media — and then add to it when the inevitable divisions emerge after Truss’s first reshuffle and ministerial appointments.

With four leaders in six years, the Conservatives have shown that regicide is addictive. For once, the fate of the self-destructive Napoleon should be ignored and Labour should interfere while its enemy is making mistakes. Politics is shaped by struggle and Starmer and his team need to lead the fight — or their next campaign will share the same fate as Sunak’s.

Finally, Liz Truss seems set to become the next Prime Minister. Labour can’t believe their luck. But if Labour think Liz Truss will be a walkover, they should think again. When the dust clears, they will be facing a formidable opponent.

For a start, Labour already have a longstanding women problem. The Conservative Party have had two women leaders, both of whom have become Prime Minister. Labour has a great record of powerful female ministers from Jennie Lee to Barbara Castle, but the highest position held by women in the party has been Deputy Leader. And even though both female deputies — Margaret Beckett and Harriet Harman — became acting party leaders neither of them became PM.

But while Labour needs to learn to take women seriously, they should take Liz Truss very seriously indeed. One of her overlooked strengths is that she has been on a political journey. Changing your mind is often thought of as a weakness in politicians, whereas in reality an unchanging commitment to ideology is one of their most eccentric habits. In normal life, we change our minds frequently and without fuss. As economist Paul Samuelson said, in a line so good it is often attributed to Keynes: “Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?” In itself, changing their mind humanises a politician — a particular asset in a time of popular revolt against out-of-touch elites.

But, more than that, making a political journey shows character. Three of the most significant politicians of the Blair era — John Reid, Alan Milburn, and David Blunkett — were great New Labour reformers who had started on the hard Left. Their politics had been tempered and strengthened by their journey. Liz Truss was brought up on the Left and attended anti-nuclear peace camps with her mother. She then became a Liberal Democrat activist, famously demanding an end to the monarchy to Paddy Ashdown’s discomfort. And when a Tory Cabinet minister she backed Remain not Leave, though she is now a passionate Brexiteer. Those surprised that Tory party members overwhelmingly see a former Remainer as the best defender of Brexit need to remember their New Testament: “There will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent.” The redemption narrative is one of our most powerful stories: she who once was blind, but now can see.

The fact Liz Truss has been on a political journey also makes her a powerful communicator. Some of the most persuasive arguments in politics are based on empathy rather than angry disagreement. Liz Truss knows why voters find progressive policies attractive, which can strengthen the persuasive power of her arguments for people to change their views. And her speaking style is clear and simple. The listener readily understands what she thinks and believes. Her opponents who too readily dismiss her as simplistic are missing the point. Politics is not a mathematical equation — a ten-point plan won’t beat a five-point plan 10-5. The messages and policies that win are those that connect with the heart as much as the head.

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The Truss agenda is straightforward. The educational system is failing kids. Grammar schools would identify and help some bright working-class and minority children. The cost-of-living crisis is hitting wallets and purses. A tax cut would give money back to the public. Energy prices are spiking. Pausing the green levy would reduce prices. Now, there are good arguments against each of these policies, but they are superficially strong one-liners. It takes time to explain how grammar schools distort the education of the vast majority of pupils who don’t get into them, or to make the case that there is a danger that tax cuts lead to more inflation. The arguments against Liz Truss’s policies are strong but they need to be explained. And, as the old political saying goes, “when you’re explaining, you’re losing”.

Populist policies are popular because they give a sugar rush. The former Chancellor is formidably clever, he has been a lifelong Thatcherite and Brexiteer, and the interventions he drove at the Treasury — both furlough and business loans — saved jobs and firms. And you can see his frustration as the Tory party members ignore his commitments, his record and his achievements. But his floundering campaign should be a lesson for Labour if they want to confront Liz Truss. Rishi Sunak has repeatedly come across in the leadership debates like the cleverest boy in the class. His hand is up first. His answers are always by the book. His contempt for Liz Truss is withering. And it is all digging him a bigger and bigger hole, because while you can respect the smart kid, it’s really hard to warm to them.

The biggest frustration for Rishi Sunak must be that while his resignation caused the fall of Boris Johnson, the former Chancellor is being painted as the continuity candidate. And while Liz Truss says that she wishes the Prime Minister hadn’t resigned, and that therefore there wasn’t a leadership contest, she is taken as the change candidate. One of the best jokes in the US TV show Veep comes when Selina Myers uses the slogan “continuity with change” for her Presidential campaign. It works because it is bizarrely true — and it is true because that is what most voters want. They’re not revolutionaries, they’re realists.

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Starmer can't afford to be Blair

By Richard Johnson

The Truss offer is continuity with the spirit of Johnson and Brexit while meeting the demands of the voters who were, and are, angry with the status quo. That anger has been the fuel of politics since the Global Financial Crisis — it was there in Brexit, in the Scottish independence referendum, in the rise of Corbyn, and in Boris Johnson’s 2019 landslide. The fact that such competing and conflicting political forces can harness that same anger signals that there is an underlying volatility in British politics that can be channelled in different directions by strong and intelligent leadership.

It is in leadership that Labour must contest most convincingly. Liz Truss will likely be undone by events. The cost-of-living crisis is of such a scale that it is hard to see any of her policies — or any of Rishi Sunak’s — that will be more than a drop in the ocean. To win, Keir Starmer must learn from New Labour. Attack the new Prime Minister and her government, but don’t nit-pick. The critique must be based on a vision of hope and a positive project that positions Labour once more as the “political wing of the British people”. Otherwise, Keir Starmer risks being just one more man, in a long line of men, who have underestimated Liz Truss at their peril. After all, there are no accidental Prime Ministers, and like the rest, Truss has guile, will and talent.

One explanation is that “Albo”, as Albanese is affectionately known, and his strategists got it right with their policy-lite, “small target” strategy. Labor unexpectedly lost the 2016 General Election by standing on a policy-rich programme which created many targets for their Liberal opponents to scaremonger about. This time, nothing was left to chance. The ALP’s promises were so minimal that there was no threat to any existing or potential voters. Their campaign was run, in Roy Jenkins’s famous phrase, like a museum curator carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished wooden floor — avoiding any slip at all costs.

Labor’s primary vote — the number of people making the ALP their first choice — dropped to a historic low, but while voting in some regions is set to go on for days, and indeed weeks, Labor are likely to get to the 76 seats they need to form a majority in the small 151-seat House of Representatives. That’s because the Liberal party, who govern in coalition with the National party, has lost at least 21 seats.

Why such a big loss? The simple answer is that, in the words of the Australian journalist Laura Tingle, this was “the climate change election”. Neither of the two main parties wanted the election to be on these terms — Labor because of their massive defeat at the hands of Liberal party leader Tony Abbott in the “carbon tax” election, and the Liberals because of a deep split between realists and deniers in their party. But voters had a different view: the increasing frequency of bushfires and flooding in Australia in the last few years ensured climate action was top of their agenda.

The Australian electoral system is an Alternative Vote (AV) system), in which you vote for first and second-choice parties. This entrenches the two largest parties by channelling the votes for smaller parties votes towards major parties once first preferences have been counted. But this time around, the system was derailed by the creation of a new party: the “Teal” Independents. The “Teals”, named for their campaign colours and for their political positioning — green-leaning “blue” politicians — are in effect an Australian form of Macron’s En Marche.

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First, they ran as a “start-up”, and like all disruptors were free of the constraints of legacy organisations. I remember being told by Ismael Melien, Emanuel Macron’s adviser and campaign strategist, that the most important book he read before setting up En Marche wasn’t a political campaign textbook but a book by the CEO of a successful software start-up, which gave him the confidence to “make it new” from top to bottom.

The Teals brought new people into politics. In the “Teal” target seats of Goldstein and Kuyong in Melbourne, and Warringah and Wentworth in Sydney, 800-900 volunteers came out: mainly cashed-up female retirees in their first ever political campaign. The Teals, then, are an expression of the continuing feminisation of Australian politics. The Liberal party had resisted positive action for women in selections for parliament. The Liberal leadership’s view, as often with incumbents. was that conservative-leaning women had nowhere else to go. They were wrong — and the Liberal party learned two hard truths: sisters could do it for themselves; and that once you break one link of party discipline (membership) you find it easier to break others (on policy).

And so they hit the streets, leafleting shopping centres and malls, and they hit the doorsteps, in many constituencies knocking on every single door. It was a tsunami of “Teals”. And they used humour, producing “Throw them out” posters that could be stuck on wheelie bins, so that at least once a week their message was rolled out through the electorate. One, now former, Liberal MP Tim Wilson, ill-advisedly took legal action to ban some posters opposing him; he won in court, but lost in the court of public opinion.

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There was a nimbleness and flexibility about the “Teals” that neither the Liberals nor Labor could compete with. They were a network rather than a party — a vibe as much as a movement.

In a sense the rise of the Teals is all about demographics. Since Liberal Prime Minister John Howard won a series of victories over the ALP by winning over “battlers” — the lower middle class, small business, “tradies” — Australian politics has focused on swing seats in the outer suburbs. The small ‘l’ liberal women voters in the inner suburbs were dismissed as “doctors’ wives” — well-meaning, bleeding hearts who wouldn’t determine any election. Well, it turns out they matter. They’re not “doctors’ wives” any more — they’re doctors, themselves or surgeons, lawyers, accountants, and executives. More importantly, professional women as a class are now larger in number than tradies. Demographic change isn’t political destiny, but it sure feels like it when you have been chucked out on your ear.

What was it about the final years of Blair’s premiership that ensured his political legacy? There’s the obvious point that when he became PM it was his first and only job in government and he had energy but no experience. By the time he left, he knew exactly how to get things done but was running out of road.

I was Blair’s Political Secretary between 2005 and 2007 and had a front row seat for the end of the “Blair Years”. They were rugged times. There were new opponents on the benches opposite with the election of David Cameron as Tory leader. And there were old enemies on manoeuvre on the Labour benches, as Brown’s attempts to dislodge Tony became increasingly obvious and frantic. Remember the rolling resignations of the Parliamentary Private Secretaries — Khalid Mahmood, Wayne David, Ian Lucas, Mark Tami, David Wright and Chris Mole? Probably not, but it was the “How many letters have been submitted?” moment of its day.

Eventually, Labour MPs were ground down by the relentless friendly-fire attacks and Blair stood down as PM in May 2007, a year earlier than he had planned. Yet he never became bitter. I remember a meeting in the Den, the PM’s room between the private office and the Cabinet Room, when a colleague exasperatedly said: “But Gordon just wants to be Prime Minister!” After a moment’s reflection, Tony replied: “It’s not an ignoble ambition.” Thoughtful and scrupulous.

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The only way Boris can survive Partygate

By John McTernan

The Labour Party’s internal wrangling was an opportunity Cameron seized. He repeatedly found ways to create alliances with Labour rebels to oppose government policy — the core was the awkward squad which included Corbyn who voted with the Tories numerous times. But the number of rebels was growing. It is an iron law of politics that ministers who serve loyally when in the government suddenly find their consciences when they return to the backbench in a reshuffle. Where once they had demanded the whips push through their policies, they now found their personal and political integrity required them to question — and often oppose — government legislation.

By the third term, there had been many reshuffles and the number of former ministers outweighed our majority. In response to this, I ran a small group we called the “Non-embittered Former Ministers”. We also added Keith Hill as the Prime Minister’s PPS. A former union official, he added reach to our political networks among MPs, and every week allocated the precious hour after Prime Minister’s Questions when backbenchers got to meet with the PM to raise concerns, float policy ideas or introduce guests. On one memorable occasion, I brought Shakira in to meet the Prime Minister — she was in Westminster for a parliamentary event. Tony started to explain that he knew her music and admired the way it combined Colombian music traditions with modern American pop music. “Ah”, replied Shakira — silencing us all. “So you think I am some kind of allegory of globalisation?”

But it wasn’t all about party management. There was the pressure, too, of external inquiries. This was the first time the Metropolitan Police had ever investigated Number 10 — a complaint from an SNP backbencher that should have been dismissed immediately as party politics led instead to the “cash for honours” probe. In the absence of any evidence, the Met spent 18 months trying, and failing to find any. The PM’s behaviour was respectful: he let it be known that being interviewed under caution would be a resigning matter — a contrast with the attitude of the current Prime Minister. And he unreservedly backed the few of us, including myself, who were questioned by the police. His confidence that it would come to nothing was morale-boosting during a deeply stressful period.

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In the end, third terms should be critical for legacy. Margaret Thatcher’s third term, despite the disaster of the “poll tax”, embedded and made irreversible many of her changes. The task New Labour set itself was to leave most of the Tory reforms, but to rebalance some and to rebuild the public square which had been brutally neglected. So, mass picketing and car park show of hands strike ballots were left outlawed, but workers rights were extended, in particular with maternity rights and the statutory right to bank holidays on top of annual leave. The “right to buy” your council home was maintained, but two million social homes were renovated to Decent Homes standards. Choice in health and education was built on, and extended, while waiting lists were slashed — with a now nearly unimaginable guarantee of an 18-week wait for routine treatment.

In turn, most of Blair’s reforms became irreversible. The National Insurance increase to fund the NHS was kept, and has been mimicked by Boris Johnson’s government. Health performance has been hampered by persistent underfunding, the pandemic, and the ill-fated Lansley reforms which are now being abandoned — but the NHS was kept on the road by appointing former Blair adviser Sir Simon Stevens as Chief Executive of NHS England.

There were also significant moments. The G8 meeting in Gleneagles in 2008 deciding to make poverty history by wiping out the debt of heavily indebted countries in the Global South. London winning the bid for the 2012 Olympics. And the tragedy of the 7/7 bombings which drew great compassion and leadership from Blair.

Of course, Blair’s leadership ended in resignation, and New Labour’s third term ended in defeat for Brown. Unfortunately, for a decade party members took the quixotic view that the only reason voters elected increasingly Right-wing Tory governments was that Labour was insufficiently Left-wing. And under Miliband and Corbyn the party moved further and further away from the centre and further and further towards destruction.

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Blair didn’t despair. He made the argument about how Labour could win again. And he has consistently continued to make critical policy interventions — such as driving the argument on vaccination rollout. This strategic patience has paid off. The true legacy of the 2005-2007 Blair government is finally becoming clear. Labour’s desire to win is back. Policy ideas are unashamedly Blairite. And Starmer’s mantra “Opportunity, Security, Respect” could come straight from a Tony Blair conference speech.

History will be the ultimate judge of Tony’s reputation. It will weigh the Iraq war against the Good Friday Agreement which ended the war in Northern Ireland. For Labour Party members and activists it has thankfully settled into the realisation that Labour’s electoral record in the last eleven elections is: Lose, Lose, Lose, Lose, Win, Win, Win, Lose, Lose, Lose, Lose. And the only way to win is to build on Tony Blair’s record rather than spurn it.

This is the true politics of wartime: battling with your political enemies (always on your own side), fighting your political opponents (the invariably smug, self-satisfied opposition parties), and wrestling with the media. As Tony Blair’s Political Secretary during the cash-for-peerages scandal in 2006 — the last time the Met investigated Number 10 — I know this well.

From time to time, I find myself wondering what I would advise Boris Johnson if he asked Switch, the legendary Number 10 switchboard which can find anyone the PM wants to talk to anywhere in the world, to get me on the line. What I would say today, with a bit of help from Ronald Reagan, is that the answer is simple, but it’s not easy.

First, Prime Minister, take it on the chin. Great leadership involves making the final decision, and that is balanced by taking full responsibility for it, even if it appears only tangential to you. So accept the judgement of the Met in full — don’t quibble with it. No-one recalls whether Jeremy Corbyn had a case to make about the EHRC investigation into the Labour Party. They remember his grumbling with the report — something which he had no authority to do. When you are being investigated, no matter how high your rank is, the authority always lies with the investigator. No equivocation. Be true to your brand, Boris. Be the Anti-Corbyn.

Next, make an apology. I know you have made them before, but new circumstances require fresh words. And contrition. You can do that, as you showed the first time you went to the House of Commons to say sorry. Today we need a performance of the same power, but one that also shows generosity and selflessness. Again, you have to take this on the chin.

You could say something like:

“The verdict of the Metropolitan Police is clear. I will not contest this judgement. I accept it unreservedly. I will not contest the facts. I broke the rules, and I have been fined. I paid the fine immediately. I will not seek to blame others, whether civil servants or advisers. As a great man once said, the buck stops here.

“This is the greatest country in the world. It is a privilege to lead and I have fallen below the standards you expect of me. I cannot change what happened in Number 10 in the past, but I promise you that my failure, when so many sacrificed so much, will spur me to deliver for each and every one of you, in every corner of our great nation.”

Apologise once, deeply, sincerely, profoundly. But don’t repeat it again and again. That undermines the impact. Just look at how Labour’s constant attempts to disavow Jeremy Corbyn and all his works has made them seem obsessed with him, as if they have something to hide.

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Then, take your punishment like a man. The local elections were always going to be rugged. Now they are going to be your version of Tony Blair’s “masochism strategy”. These elections were never going to be politically important from your point of view. The ballot four years ago culminated in a pretty high tide which was always likely to ebb. Now voters can have a major political outburst – the moment when they vent their pent up anger. When you’re out campaigning, don’t ask what they are angry about, let alone argue with them. Just let them get it off their chest. Far better they scream at you this May than at the next General Election.

Finally, show you’ve changed, don’t just keep saying you will. Move swiftly after the local elections to have a mini-Budget. Use it as an opportunity to abandon the cuts in your Spring Statement. No voter will care that it’s a U-turn, so long as it gives them what they need. And what they need is cash, and quickly. Stop pandering to the Treasury orthodoxy. Indeed, there will be no better time, given the Icarean fate of your once-illustrious neighbour. This is politics. What’s good for the voters is good for the government.

Perhaps most importantly, do this fast: speed kills, in politics too. Don’t be distracted from the simple strategy. Apologise, take your medicine, give the public what they want.

There will be bumps in the road. There will be endless talking heads droning on about “convention”. Others will parse Hansard. There will be an obsession with processology: who said what to whom, who did what when, and who knew what. But don’t get involved in relitigating the past. That, after all, is the point of taking full responsibility.

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Instead, briefly remind people that you took full responsibility and rapidly pivot to delivering real help to the punters. This should be genuine help: don’t just have a mini-Budget. The iron law of government communications is that you can have one multi-billion pound announcement, or billions of one pound announcements. I know which suits your style.

Yes, this is undoubtedly a brutal moment to be in Number Ten, but politics is, and always has been, a contact sport. As an adviser you spend a lot of time stopping bad things happening. If you doubt that, just ask former advisers about their proudest achievements — they will reel off a list of averted disasters. (Like the time John Prescott wanted to abandon the “right to buy” scheme: technocratically neat, politically disastrous.)

Well, the worst has happened now for the Prime Minister. A Metropolitan Police investigation isn’t unprecedented. (Though in the case of ”cash for peerages”, we were cleared.) What is unprecedented is the world we lived in during lockdown. We are all relieved that it is over, and hope it will never come again.

The challenge for the Prime Minister is if the FPNs bring back that pain, and wash away the gains of our recent freedom. The challenge for Number 10 is to allow the anger and pain an outlet, while harnessing the feeling that we have turned a corner. Battered and bruised, but still standing, should be their ambition for Boris Johnson.