Liz Truss appears to be taking a “scorched earth” approach to the economy which will leave a Labour government to pick up the pieces after the election expected in 2024, a shadow cabinet minister has said.
As stock markets sank and the pound plunged in the wake of last week’s “kamikaze” mini-Budget, delegates at Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool could scarcely believe their luck at the apparent willingness of the prime minister and chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng to take a hatchet to their own party’s biggest electoral assets.
And there was a growing sense of confidence among them that opinion polls giving Keir Starmer’s party leads of up to 17 points over the Conservatives could presage a remarkable return to power just five years after Labour’s crushing defeat in 2019.
Senior members of Starmer’s team feel that Labour’s journey to Downing Street has been massively accelerated by the downfall of Boris Johnson over Partygate and by the Tories’ choice of an ideologically driven leader who they see as hugely out of touch with voters.
They believe that the arrival of Truss allows them to play to Starmer’s strengths by casting the election as a choice between a careful and responsible statesman and a reckless gambler.
Moves like scrapping the 45p tax rate, ending the bankers’ bonus cap, rejecting a windfall tax and racking up billions in debt allow them to paint Truss and Kwarteng as the unashamed friends of the rich and deprived Tories of their key attack line – that Labour would waste money and borrow excessively.
“They seem to have given up the whole project of broadening their coalition that won Johnson the red-wall seats,” said one. “It’s the same with fracking – it’s poison in a lot of seats the Tories need to win. They seem to be giving up on climate and the environment at just the point when mainstream opinion is coming round to the fact it’s a major priority.”
Where the talk at last autumn’s conference in Brighton was of a two-term project to make Labour electable again – and of whether Sir Keir would survive to complete the scaling of the “mountain” the party had to scale – in Liverpool the bars and restaurants were buzzing with dreams of an overall majority allowing Starmer to govern without the need for support from Lib Dems or the SNP.
While shadow ministers dutifully repeated the importance of avoiding complacency, conversation kept returning to the elections of 1964, when Harold Wilson overturned a 100-seat Tory majority, and 1997, when Tony Blair gained 145 seats to sweep aside a stale and tired Conservative government.
One shadow cabinet member told The Independent the mood at conference was “exhilarating”.
“It’s the best I’ve seen it since the late Nineties, when we really felt we were on our way,” he said.
“The Tories have really screwed themselves by choosing Liz. She and Kwarteng come across as ideologues who are not listening to anybody.
“When you look at the polls, there has been no ‘Truss bounce’. She’s ‘hit the ground’, as she said she would.”
Another said: “They haven’t just vacated the middle-ground, they’ve leapfrogged out of the pitch.”
There was a sense of near-bewilderment in Liverpool over the PM’s strategy. Did she really believe a Thatcher-style tax-cutting agenda could deliver sustainable growth in the deeply unfavourable context of a cost of living crisis, or was she simply hoping for a brief “sugar rush” which could get her through the election?
Some senior figures thought it was possible that a tired Tory party which had given up hope of staying in office was simply grabbing what it could for its supporters and leaving Labour to deal with the consequences. “I really think they could be that cynical,” one said.
Another figure very high up in the Starmer team put it down to “ideological fervour”: “It’s like they’ve swallowed the Trump nonsense about the ‘big state’ whole. They actually seem to believe that the establishment – the Treasury, the civil service, the OBR – is against them and they know better.
“They come across as arrogant. Cameron and Osborne were so careful about not seeming to be in it to help the rich. Truss and Kwarteng don’t seem to have that inhibition.”
Labour spirits have been buoyed at Liverpool by Starmer’s apparent success in shaking off memories of Jeremy Corbyn’s regime, just a year after he was loudly heckled by leftists furious at his “betrayal” of promises to retain the former leader’s agenda.
The respectful observation of a tribute to the Queen and the rendition of the national anthem before a union jack backdrop was the physical representation of a party that has returned to the centre ground and once more become “the political wing of the British people”, said Starmer.
Expected rows over strikes and picket lines failed to materialise, with one senior union leader telling The Independent that the movement was not going to “rock the boat” at a time when it can seriously envisage Labour relatively soon being in a position to take action on workers’ rights.
And Starmer’s keynote speech, promising a nationalised energy firm and declaring that like 1964 and 1997 “this is a Labour moment”, was greeted with repeated standing ovations with no sign of dissenting voices.
Delegates streaming out of the hall were unanimous in their praise for the address, with one saying “He’s shown we’re back, we’re united and we’re ready for government”, and another adding: “If you’d told me three years ago we’d have got so far by now, I wouldn’t have believed you.”
One shadow minister contrasted the atmosphere with past years: “Previously, when you went on to stage, you were preparing yourself for the heckles. This time, it was like a best man’s speech - everyone in the room willing you to do well and wanting to be part of the experience.”
Although the leadership was defeated in a vote on proportional representation, a member of the shadow cabinet said: “If the biggest spat we have at conference is on voting reform, I reckon we’ll take that.”
Remaining uncertainties in Labour ranks revolved about Sir Keir’s ability to break through to voters as a prime minister in waiting, with a poll for The Independent finding that almost half (46 per cent) still do not know what he stands for, two and a half years after he took office.
One senior figure accepted that Starmer needs to make himself “more three-dimensional” by giving voters a sense of who he is as a person.
“That doesn’t mean trying to turn up the charisma,” he said. “But he has got to be relatable, and he’s not done that yet.”
But another said Starmer needed to be cautious about opening up on his personality: “You’ve got to be who you are, otherwise you end up with Gordon Brown liking the Arctic Monkeys and Theresa May running through the wheatfields.”
Another agreed: “I’m not worried about Keir’s presentation. He doesn’t have to be out there cracking jokes and scoring points. He has plenty of attack dogs to do that for him.
“What he needs to do is show the contrast between the choices on offer. With Boris it was the serious statesman versus the joker. With Liz he is facing someone who is coming across as reckless and a gambler. It is good that he appears more careful.”