Keir Starmer has urged his shadow cabinet to stop briefing the press that he is boring, warning them: “What’s boring is being in opposition.” Stung by a series of negative stories about his leadership, Starmer angrily urged colleagues at Tuesday’s shadow cabinet meeting to focus on the job in hand, telling them it was “boring” to undermine Labour’s project of getting back into government. Several of those around the table then echoed their leader’s calls for unity and discretion, in a lengthy exchange described by one shadow frontbencher as “ironically very boring”. Starmer has been accused by senior colleagues in recent days of failing to articulate clearly what Labour stands for or to enthuse the public about his leadership. An Opinium poll for the Observer on Sunday found that voters believe Boris Johnson still makes a better prime minister than Starmer would, by 28% to 26%, though Labour consistently leads the Tories when it comes to voting intention. However, Starmer’s allies believe he has not been given sufficient credit for rebuilding his party’s reputation after 2019’s catastrophic general election result, or for undermining Johnson’s position. They are hopeful of winning next week’s byelection in Wakefield and point to Labour’s solid performance in May’s local elections when the party made progress in many of the key seats it needs to win to secure a majority in Westminster. Starmer’s approach is based on a detailed analysis of the voter groups Labour needs to win over in these seats, and which messages are likely to appeal to them. Internal projections currently suggest 10% of 2019 Tory voters in these target areas have switched their allegiance to Labour, the Guardian understands. The party scored a political hit with its policy of levying a windfall tax on the energy companies benefiting from surging global fossil fuel prices – a plan that was rubbished and then adopted by the government. But some MPs have raised concerns about whether the party has another headline-grabbing policy ready to replace it. Starmer’s team are determined not to be rushed into producing a detailed shopping list of policies, however, when there may be more than two years to go before the next general election. Instead, Starmer is expected to give several speeches in the run-up to his party’s autumn conference, in which he will set out in broad terms how Labour will frame its election message.
With the cost of living crisis likely to feature heavily in any future campaign, the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, published a document called “Labour’s plan for the economy” over the weekend. It included proposals for immediate support for families, as well as longer-term policies such as developing a hi-tech industrial strategy. Starmer has promised to resign if Durham police find that he breached Covid rules by eating a curry and drinking beer with colleagues in the run-up to last May’s Hartlepool byelection. His team believe that is highly unlikely, but the pledge to go unleashed leadership jostling among potential future candidates for Starmer’s job. A word cloud produced this week by the polling group JL Partners, based on responses from 1,000 voters, showed that “boring” was the adjective most frequently used of Starmer. Other prominent descriptions included “bland” and “weak”, but also “honest”. An equivalent exercise for Boris Johnson showed the public’s most common description of him was “liar”, with “incompetent” and “buffoon” also featuring heavily.