Starmer and his ‘Government in waiting’ hold daily virus briefings

LABOUR IS holding coronavirus briefings early every morning to shape the party’s response to the pandemic, with foreign leaders and experts giving their views, it has been revealed.

On The Yorkshire Post political podcast Pod’s Own Country, Leeds West MP Rachel Reeves spoke about the team, which is seen as what leader Sir Keir Starmer would expect were he in No 10.

Ms Reeves said: “There’s a team of us who meet every morning to help ensure we’re on top of the latest developments, whether that is on hospital admissions, the contact-tracing strategy, the testing regime.

“We’re feeding in our knowledge and experience both from a local level and in terms of the area we cover in the Shadow Cabinet.”

It is understood key shadow cabinet members such as Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth and Shadow Chancellor Anneleise Dodds take part, as well as Sir Keir, with experts briefing politicians and foreign leaders at times sharing their experiences.

Ms Reeves, who sits on Sir Keir Starmer’s frontbench as the Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said: “I’ve been doing a lot of work looking at how to use British manufacturers to produce the personal protective equipment people need to work on the front-line.

“And I’ve been looking at some of the Government’s outsourcing contracts, where they’ve handed over vast amounts of taxpayers’ money to private-sector firms.

“In many cases that work, I believe – and the Labour Party believes – could be much better done at a local level, using local expertise.”

Initially the meetings focused on the health aspect of the pandemic.

But they have now moved on to encompass the economy and the recovery and are understood to be positioned as a move a “Government

in waiting” would be expected to take. Ms Reeves spoke about the impact the virus was having on communities in her constituency and on a national level, dismissing claims that the pandemic was “the great leveller”.

She said: “If you’ve got a home with a garden and you live with people you love, your experience of lockdown has been very different than if you live on the 10th floor of a block of flats, perhaps with an abusive partner.

“So those inequalities of circumstance that already exist, and we already knew existed going into this crisis, I think have really come to the fore.

“And people have started thinking much more about the situations in which we live our everyday lives, something that I’ve been concerned about for some time.

“When we say we need to build back better, I think it’s about addressing those challenges that people face in their everyday lives.”

A team meet every morning to ensure we’re on top of developments.

Leeds West MP Rachel Reeves speaking on the Yorkshire Post podcast.