The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Ben Riley-Smith
POLITICAL EDITOR
THERE was warmth and good cheer at the technology hub in Dudley on Thursday morning as Sir Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner launched Labour’s local election campaign.
Ms Rayner joked to the room of Labour activists that she would get the drinks in with Sir Keir. The Labour leader warned others about “Ange’s” favourite Venom cocktail. “You’ll live to regret it,” he told the crowd.
In Downing Street, the storm clouds have barely shifted for months. The question on Tory MPs’ minds is whether that ominous feeling in the air will turn into thunder and lightning.
With at most 10 months before the next election, Labour’s poll lead is expanding rather than shrinking. The signs of the political tide turning are simple to spot, including one largely overlooked – the number of Tory world figures who have quietly begun advising Labour in various ways.
Boris Johnson’s former wife Marina Wheeler KC, a barrister, is giving advice to Sir Keir’s party on protecting women against workplace harassment.
Mark Carney, picked by George Osborne as Bank of England’s governor, has built on his praise of Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, by guiding her on private sector investment.
Former Tory ministers are also in the mix. Nick Boles, the former skills minister, is offering informal insights to shadow ministers on how to transition from opposition into power.
Lord O’Neill of Gatley, a former Conservative Treasury secretary and champion of the Tory-declared “Northern Powerhouse”, has helped on a Labour review of business start-up funding. Lord Cooper of Windrush, made a Tory peer by Lord Cameron thanks to his polling and strategy advice, has on multiple occasions addressed the Labour shadow cabinet. He went to school with Sir Keir.
can reveal that Tom Fletcher, who was Lord Cameron’s foreign policy adviser and a former Lebanon ambassador, is also now feeding in thoughts on diplomacy.
David Lammy, Labour’s shadow foreign secretary, sometimes picks up the phone. “Nothing formal, just someone we speak to,” says a Labour source familiar with the chats.
Mr Fletcher already had Labour credentials, having also advised Gordon Brown in Downing Street. But all are signs of Whitehall types sensing from where the sun is shining.
Mr Osborne, the former Tory chancellor who bears the scars of election defeats as well as the insights of the Cameroon rebuild, talks about political “spirals”. On Political Currency, his podcast with Ed Balls, he noted that for parties in trouble, problems beget problems.
Proof points of the downward spiral are easy to identify. How to snap out of it, to reverse the polling slide and the leadership speculation, are trickier to locate. This week, one Conservative MP, echoing the sentiments of many colleagues, said the party was “between a rock and a hard place”.
That reality is highlighted by two findings buried in the TelegraphSavanta opinion poll, a weekly election tracker that will publish voter insights in the run-up to the election.
One showed that on all five of Rishi Sunak’s self-declared priorities for office, unveiled with a flourish in January last year, Labour is deemed more likely to deliver success.
In other words, voters believe Sir Keir, not Mr Sunak, is better placed to reduce inflation, grow the economy, get debt falling, stop the small boat crossings and reduce NHS waiting lists. That pressure has led to speculation – ridiculed by No 10 – that Mr Sunak might consider letting someone else lead. “It’s not personal.
‘It’s not personal. There is no vision. There is no ability to articulate it. I don’t think he’s enjoying it’
There is no vision. There is no ability to articulate it,” mused one Tory MP.
“I don’t think he’s enjoying it. He may be looking at a way out.”
But then, who next? There is no perfect Tory leader on the back benches waiting to be picked, or at least not in the eyes of Tory voters, according to the Telegraph-Savanta poll.
Last weekend, respondents were asked who should lead the party: Mr Sunak or one of the theoretical challengers. He was put up against Penny Mordaunt, Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Robert Jenrick, and – out of curiosity – Nigel Farage.
Mr Sunak was favoured comfortably against all five by those who voted Tory at the last election. In other words: whatever the woes, best stick with Mr