Captured by a series of negative stories about his leadership, Starmer angrily urged colleagues at Tuesday’s shady cabinet meeting to focus on the work at hand, telling them it was “boring” to undermine Labor’s plan to return. to the government. Several of those around the table then echoed their leader’s calls for unity and discretion, in a lengthy exchange described by a shady front bench as “ironically too boring.” Starmer has been accused by senior colleagues in recent days of failing to articulate clearly what Labor stands for or to excite the public about his leadership. An Opinium poll for the Observer on Sunday found that voters believe Boris Johnson is still the better prime minister than Starmer, at 28% to 26%, even though Labor is firmly ahead of the Tories in terms of voting intentions. However, Starmer’s allies believe he has not been given enough credit for rebuilding his party’s reputation after the disastrous 2019 general election or undermining Johnson’s position. They hope to win next week’s election in Wakefield and point to a solid Labor performance in the May local election, as 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 groups of voters that Labor should win in these seats and what messages they are likely to like. The party dealt a political blow with its policy of imposing an unexpected tax on energy companies benefiting from rising world fossil fuel prices – a plan that was scrapped and later adopted by the government. However, some lawmakers have expressed concern about whether the party has another front-page policy ready to replace it. However, the Starmer team is determined not to rush into a detailed list of policy markets, with more than two years to go before the next general election. Starmer, on the other hand, is expected to deliver a number of speeches ahead of his party’s autumn conference, in which he will outline how Labor will frame its election message. Subscribe to the First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7 p.m. BST With the cost-of-living crisis likely to hit hard in any future campaign, shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves published a paper called the Labor Plan for the Economy over the weekend. It included proposals for immediate support for families, as well as long-term policies such as the development of a high-tech industrial strategy. Starmer has vowed to step down if Durham police find he violated Covid rules by eating a curry and drinking beer with colleagues ahead of last May’s Hartpool election. His team believes this is highly unlikely, but the commitment to continue has freed up leadership among potential future candidates for Starmer’s job. A word cloud generated this week by poll team JL Partners, based on responses from 1,000 voters, showed that “boring” was Starmer’s most commonly used adjective. Other prominent descriptions included “meek” and “weak”, but also “honest”. A similar exercise for Boris Johnson showed that the most common description of the audience for him was “liar”, with “incompetent” and “buffoon” also being strongly characterized.
