Labour has already begun preparing for its 2029 election campaign, with the party’s political strategist Morgan McSweeney telling associates that he wants to build a new coalition of voters and “fight it like an insurgent” party.
Keir Starmer has only been prime minister for a week, making a slick start in his first days in government, but his team has already started putting in place the structures to win a second term.
This includes McSweeney being charged with thinking about political choices that will secure another victory, and Jonathan Ashworth, the former MP now leading the Labour Together thinktank, taking a “highly, highly political” role.
In a fireside chat this week with David Axelrod, the US star strategist for Barack Obama, McSweeney told those attending that his job now was to “think about the 2029 election”.
He said the party did not have to start with its current coalition of voters and would start again building the support it would need to win based on the likely electoral picture. His main argument was that the winning party “always has to fight an election like an insurgent”.
McSweeney will be involved in day-to-day political strategy as well as longer-term election planning. His efforts will be bolstered by Ashworth’s appointment to Labour Together, an organisation previously run by McSweeney and funded by party donors.
Ashworth, who lost his Leicester South seat to a pro-Gaza independent candidate, said his role would partly be looking ahead to the next four to five years.
“The campaign to win the next general election has started,” Ashworth said. “I know this from my time as a special adviser in government, that being in government is really, really busy and relentless.
“I think Labour Together can provide real space to do some of the real intellectual renewal that will need to be carried out to sustain that government … We’ll be thinking about the policy platform that that Labour will want to fight the next general election on.
“I’ll leave others to judge, but I would have thought that the signal that goes out from my appointment is that I am a very political figure who has worked closely with Keir and his team. I think that in itself signifies the importance of the organisation to the government. Also how people want the organisation to be playing a highly, highly political role thinking about the next general election campaign.”
In his first seven days, Starmer and his team have begun sowing a political narrative of being left a disastrous financial inheritance by the Conservatives, while positioning themselves as the fixers. David Lammy, the foreign secretary, went immediately to European countries to start rebuilding the UK’s relationships abroad, while Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, said the Tories had left her with no money and in the worst position since the second world war. Any scandals or departmental crises, from prison overcrowding to NHS waiting lists, are to be blamed on the legacy of the Conservatives.
The prime minister has pitched himself as the man to solve the problems left by the Conservatives, staking his reputation on being able to deliver change. Sue Gray, his chief of staff and a former senior civil servant, is integral to his efforts to get Whitehall to implement his plans.
However, some within Labour said the party was “very conscious of the likely clash between politics and policy”, and aware of the need to win over voters regardless of how difficult policies may be to deliver. One Labour source said Gray was already rubbing some of the political operatives in Starmer’s team up the wrong way as she appeared to be back in her comfort zone of letting the civil service be in the driving seat.
Labour aides said the king’s speech next week was focused on delivery rather than politics, and would be an opportunity to show the public that the party was intent on carrying out its manifesto – from the package on workers’ rights to renationalising railways.
Paul Nowak, the general secretary of the TUC, said the evidence from the first week was that “this is a government that’s going to deliver its commitments – whether that’s the launch of their national wealth fund or Jonny [Jonathan Reynolds, the business secretary] rolling up his sleeves and getting involved directly in talks with the steel unions about Port Talbot, and a more grown-up relationship with the devolved nations.”
He added: “This is a prime minister with a 170 working majority and it’s a thumping mandate from the public. For a [small number of] employers who think they can somehow frustrate the legislation [on workers’ rights] or stop it coming into being: people should respect that mandate and take on board there’s been nothing hidden. There’s no big surprises. Labour have long been talking about day one employment and union access to the workplace.”
Once the king’s speech is out of the way, attention will turn to Reeves’s first budget and the need for a spending review before the end of the year, as well as dealing with the various immediate problems from prisons to the NHS – and the potential for backbench unhappiness over the party’s refusal to scrap the two-child benefit limit.
Peter Mandelson, the Labour peer and architect of New Labour under Tony Blair, said the first week could not have gone better but the challenge would be navigating problems left by the last government while trying to implement Labour’s plans.
“With focus, planning and good execution they can sustain this momentum. It requires more three months ahead thinking rather than three weeks or three days,” he said. “The challenge is unfolding the plans already made alongside the unexploded ordnance left by the Tories from their chaos and indecision. Across Whitehall there are so many loose ends and landmines.”
