If Sir Keir Starmer keeps the focus on vibes alone at this conference, he’ll probably do just fine here in Liverpool.
Flags. Patriotism. Determination. Change. Grit. Frustration. Optimism. The word cloud on Tuesday will come out just fine.
And there’s no doubt he’s helped along the way by the faux fight with the King of the North. Government aides were laughing at yet another Andy Burnham this morning – having renounced the Bond Markets, he’s now denounced the renunciation. They’re not worried.
But the big lingering question is not about vibes and not about personnel. It’s about whether any of it will actually work. Policy – not Sir Keir’s strong suit – is absolutely fundamental to delivering the change he harps on about, and will ultimately determine whether this government succeeds.
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Because the problem of this government, and its interminable obsession with who is up and who is down, is because until now Sir Keir has lacked a vision of change the country can get behind – something he pleaded guilty to on TV this morning by saying he would fix that this week. Without policy, it is hard for the people in Liverpool to have passion.
Absent this morning is any conversation about the biggest challenge facing this government – the £30bn black hole.
The government is having three meetings a week about it, yet the prime minister has conspicuously nothing new to say about it and no desire to say it. The chancellor suggested additional growth from a youth mobility scheme. Not only is that policy not signed off, but the idea that it would touch the sides of the £30bn black hole is, as ex-Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) director Paul Johnson points out, for the birds.
This is one challenge that Ben Nunn, Rachel Reeves’s director of communications, will not have to worry about if he agrees to return to Number 10 after the budget to plug the gaps as I revealed on the Politics At Sam And Anne’s podcast.
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