Labour has a stock of well-honed attack lines to use against Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer told his shadow cabinet on Tuesday, though he warned the new prime minister was likely to get “a significant poll bounce” as the UK breathed a sigh of relief over Liz Truss’s departure. Starmer told the meeting Sunak “has only ever fought one leadership election battle his entire life and got thrashed by Liz Truss. And no wonder he doesn’t want to fight a general election”. The Labour leader said it was a moment of pride for Sunak to be the first British Asian prime minister, but said the party had three messages to keep in mind: the Tories had put their “party first, country second”, the government planned to make working people pay for their mistakes and MPs and shadow ministers should “ignore the noise” if poll leads started to crumble. Starmer said the party would not be complacent about facing Sunak, who will present a different challenge to Truss and Boris Johnson. “We all know Rishi Sunak is going to give them a significant poll bounce,” he said. “He’s going to get a double bounce: the usual new prime minister bounce plus the one Liz Truss managed to bungle.”
Nobody at the meeting had ever believed Labour’s enormous 36-point poll lead would affect the status quo, he added. “No one in this room ever thought the polls were anything but an enjoyable story. That’s why we’ve said all along, no complacency, no caution, no letting up.” Over the coming weeks, Starmer will focus on how the Conservatives have prioritised party interests over those of the country, warning that working people will pay in tax rises and spending cuts for Tory mistakes. He told shadow cabinet ministers that Sunak should not be allowed to paint himself as a “new broom”, and Labour would blame him for the Tory party’s economic missteps. Starmer will also focus on Sunak’s record as chancellor: low growth, high inflation and taxes raised for working people. MPs and shadow ministers will also attack Sunak’s ruthlessness in forcing out Johnson, his Partygate fine and his defeat by Truss, which Labour will paint as a humiliation. He hinted at those attacks at the address in shadow cabinet, calling Sunak “ruthless” and saying he “stabbed Boris Johnson in the back when he thought he could get his job”. The Labour leader will face his third prime minister at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, facing the challenge of more united Conservative green benches. Allies of Starmer conceded that his public persona was closer to Sunak’s than to Truss or Johnson, and that he would need to draw an ideological differential. “Essentially it is about a positive vision for the country, a new way of building a better economy – not reverting to the old tunes of austerity,” said one senior aide. Starmer’s advisers believe they can also draw a distinction in their characters, with Sunak as a “weird guy” attempting to present himself as slick and Starmer as a reliable “centrist dad”. Labour insiders have always claimed to be confident attacking Sunak as the strategy has been developed over the long term, beginning early last year when the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, told colleagues the party needed to find a way to attack his slick, popular image. The final version was thrashed over the summer before the Tory leadership contest, starting with “the chancellor who raised your taxes while his family avoided their own” – a reference to Sunak’s wife’s status as a non-dom until the spring. Now Starmer will paint him as “a weak prime minister who will have to put his party first and the country second”, he told shadow ministers. “His first message yesterday was about the need to save the Tory party, not serve the country.” Key to that attack, which Starmer referred to in shadow cabinet, was Sunak’s recorded boast that he had ripped up funding formulas handing money to deprived urban areas to redistribute it to more well-off, predominantly Conservative areas. There is no plan to make direct attacks on Sunak’s £700m net worth, much of which was inherited through his wife’s stake in her billionaire father’s business, but shadow ministers are expected to paint him as “out of touch” with references to gaffes about his use of contactless payments or disclosing that his family buys multiple different kinds of bread.