Whatever you say about it, don’t call it a relaunch. Sir Keir Starmer will fanfare a new “Plan for Change” this Thursday and it is being bigged up by Downing Street as a momentous event, no less than “the most ambitious delivery plan in a generation”. His aides are wary of the dreaded r-word because many observers are going to interpret this, fairly or not, as a desperate attempt to turn the page on recent troubles.
It is a truth now pretty much universally acknowledged within the government that it has got off to a much stickier start than it expected. In too many areas, it has hit the ground not running, but stumbling. More definition of Labour’s goals was provided by the budget, but at the price of rousing a lot of extremely vocal opposition, especially from those being asked to pay more tax. The latest squall to buffet Number 10 has been the enforced resignation of Lou Haigh. She could never be described as a soulmate of the prime minister, which helps explain the clinically unsentimental way in which the transport secretary was taken out of service. Losing a relatively junior member of the cabinet will have next to no impact on Labour’s eventual fate. Her fall nevertheless adds to the impression that the Starmer government is being serially surprised by embarrassing revelations and knocked about by events.
