SIR KEIR STARMER has a gloomy message for us all this week: Things will only get worse.
Forget the D:Ream anthem of Labour’s 1997 victory, promising that things can only get better.
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This is more of a dirge to a difficult autumn ahead.
The Prime Minister is giving a speech tomorrow where he will tell the public that “change won’t happen overnight” and there are no “quick fixes”.
He is aiming his address at voters.
But I wonder if he is also worried that his own party needs a talking-to as well.
This autumn is going to be hard on Labour MPs who have not quite realised just how difficult life is going to be in government.
If Starmer wants to get on with the business of fixing all the broken things he has identified, he needs to give his party a simple instruction: buckle up!
The speech this week is all about buying Starmer time.
The Prime Minister and his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, have already got some space to try to get things straight by telling anyone who’ll listen that every single mess — possibly even the summer’s wash-out weather — is the Tories’ fault.
They’ve pointed with melodramatic surprise to black holes in the public finances that everyone already knew about.
Tomorrow Starmer will also talk about a “societal black hole”.
He wants to blame some of the recent rioters’ behaviour on the Conservatives, saying the violent thugs were “gaming” a system they thought would not lock them up because there were not enough prison spaces.
Reality will hit
He will say he then had to release other prisoners early so he could see the rioters jailed — a decision he didn’t want to take but was forced to by the mistakes and neglect of the Conservatives.
This “look what they made me do” argument is mainly aimed at voters.
Starmer wants to say he is levelling with the public “after years of false promises”.
But he will have to have the same conversations with his own MPs, too.
Just look at the shock of many Labourites to the fury from pensioners about changes to the winter fuel payment.
Or the angst earlier in the summer about Labour having to keep the Conservatives’ two-child benefit limit.
Neither of these decisions are anywhere near as difficult or unpopular as some of the things Reeves will have to announce in the autumn.
Senior Labour MPs think Starmer and Reeves need to work harder at charming their MPs
Isabel Hardman
At that point, reality will really hit Labour MPs.
Government is often about deciding between two unattractive things on an almost hourly basis.
In opposition you have the time and luxury of not being in power to complain about every bad thing.
But few Labour ministers, let alone the wider party, were around the last time the party was in government.
Senior Labour MPs think Starmer and Reeves need to work harder at charming their MPs.
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“They are quite remote,” says one.
Being remote doesn’t work when you are repeatedly asking your backbenchers to march through the voting lobbies on things they do not like.
Even less so if you are going to spend two years asking them to back you up.
Those two years before there is economic growth and money from that to spend on things Labour likes are going to feel very long indeed to an MP who had looked forward to government without really imagining what it was going to be like.
Hell of a task
So as doom-filled as the Prime Minister needs to be this week when he levels with the public, he needs to go even harder when warning his MPs.
Otherwise things will only get worse.
Starmer scared off MPs who’d considering rebelling on the two-child benefit policy by threatening them.
He removed the whip from seven rather peripheral figures.
But he will want the bulk of his party to feel part of his project, rather than just scared of getting into trouble.
The party is very bulky.
He has a lot of MPs to get around now.
It’s one hell of a task.
And that’s even before he gets on to the business of governing.
Winning the election was great.
But being in government is not.
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No pomp and circumstance
IT is easy to envy the American political conventions.
Rappers, sequinned ball gowns, influencers?
We have none of that during our party conference season.
It’s more stale sandwiches, airless fringe panels and dozing off during the speeches.
I’m staring down the barrel of my 14th year of these events and it’s easier to recall the low points, like being stuck in a Lib Dem “Glee Club” or discovering too late that an event billed as a “grill” was in fact a turgid interview with a Treasury minister rather than a meat feast.
Yet I’m strangely looking forward to our low-rent British version.
Might leave the ballgown at home though.
