A testament to the kind of campaign being run by Labour is that an apparently straightforward answer from its election chief the other day caused an outbreak of incredulity from colleagues.
“How are you?” a BBC Today programme presenter had asked Pat McFadden at the start of a big interview. “I’m great, I’m great!” he replied. As concerned text messages pinged into his phone, he wryly admitted this uncharacteristic display of ebullience had been “an appalling lapse”.
Labour’s campaign coordinator, who daily tells staff “do not stop, do not take your foot off the gas, do not relax” until polling stations close at 10pm on Thursday, is someone who usually aspires to be no better than “just about OK”.
The reason he is so circumspect is not just about his character. While polls suggest Keir Starmer is cruising to victory, McFadden worries about people staying at home or wasting votes on minor parties because they believe Conservative claims – designed, he says, “to depress turnout” – that the outcome is already decided. “We’ve lost a lot of elections over the years and the polls have been wrong before. There’s a myth about British politics that power swings between us and the Tories like a pendulum. It doesn’t. History shows that every Labour victory is hard earned.”
Inside Labour’s south London campaign headquarters, long-serving officials marvel at the kind of high-end office space not normally associated with working for the party. There is an expanse of exposed artisan brickwork, a big kitchen with a proper coffee machine and little booths to drink it in. However, McFadden prefers to spend much of his time huddled with campaign director Morgan McSweeney in a windowless room, which they have nicknamed “the cell”. If they work late into the night, the sense they’re in a prison movie together is completed by the wordless arrival of food through the door.
When he emerges outside, blinking in the sunshine, to meet me for cup of tea, McFadden ignores the independent bakeries with pavement tables dotted around this part of town and instead chooses a chain-store cafe next to a supermarket on the main road. Does he even want some tea? “No,” he says, “I’m fine.” Isn’t he being just a bit – you know – dour? After all, for a party accustomed to losing, this campaign must be as good as it gets. “What’s dour about that?” he replies in his deep, if soft-spoken, Glaswegian accent. “Neither optimism nor pessimism, it’s message discipline that I want.”
Similar suggestions that the party is being too cautious on policy are also dismissed. “That’s a word used by commentators to describe not giving the Tories the kind of Labour campaign they find easy to beat. It’s not caution, it’s duty,” he says. Visibly annoyed that economic thinktanks such as the Institute for Fiscal Studies have drawn equivalence between both main parties’ failure to explain how they will pay for cash-starved public services, McFadden goes on: “Our manifesto is a seriously grownup document. Everything we will do is properly costed and funded in sharp contrast to the Tories. Rishi Sunak was meant to be the antidote to Liz Truss. He turned out just to be the next instalment producing a manifesto with an uncosted wishlist.”
He suggests too much of the coverage has been dominated by questions about levels of taxation and spending. “We’ve not had a broader debate about Britain’s place in the world, how we keep the UK together, or the technological revolution that will change so much including the way government works,” says McFadden. “The reason this country has struggled in recent years isn’t just about tax rates and spending. I accept the government budget is important but growth is the big challenge. That’s what will make people better off.” Even so, his party’s meticulous, nothing-left-to-chance preparations for the campaign meant he went into this one “more confident that we’d be able to fend off the nonsense the Conservatives do at every election … We’ve tried hard to avoid the mistakes we’ve made in the past”.
That past was largely included a long time in the political wilderness for the former business minister who attended cabinet in the last Labour government. Before Starmer brought him back into Labour’s top team, he had spent more than a decade on the backbenches. When reminded of this period, McFadden smiles and clutches his heart in mock self-pity. What did he learn from it? “I’m not sure I ever changed my view on the kind of discipline and approach that is best for the Labour party to win. But it was very unfashionable for a while,” he says. “The way that Keir has led the party in recent years shows he really wants to win. That upsets some people but when we’re not in the service of the public - facing the people rather than some internal constituency - the Tories get in and there’s nothing progressive about that.”
In government, he’s expected to be part of an inner quartet of senior cabinet ministers along with Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Angela Rayner. However, when asked about this, McFadden leans forward to emphasise how he won’t talk about what job he, or anyone else, might have after 4 July.
He does, however, allow himself one glimpse over the horizon as he shudders at the prospect of British politics being infected with the populist, far-right virus raging through France and the United States. He talks about how Nigel Farage has begun to “show his true colours” with recent remarks about breaking up the NHS and defending Vladimir Putin.
“If the nature of politics changes and I think it will – it’s evolving in front of our eyes – then we’ll have to meet that challenge,” says McFadden, his eyes sparking briefly. “We must stand up for what we believe in. We must defend our institutions and standards in public life. And, if he’s given the chance to be prime minister, Keir will respond to whatever comes in a serious and grownup way.”
Even after this election is over, you get the sense that neither Labour nor McFadden will be indulging in too much joy or shedding their defensive armour any time soon. They’re already preparing for the next battle.
Keir Starmer: The Biography, by Tom Baldwin, is published by William Collins
