Keir Starmer called on his shadow cabinet to stop informing the press that he was bored, warning them: “It’s boring to be in opposition.”
Shocked by a series of negative stories about his leadership, Starmer angrily urged his colleagues in a shadow cabinet meeting on Tuesday to focus on current work, telling them it was “boring” to undermine Labor’s project to return to government .
Several of the people 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 very boring.”
Starmer has been accused by senior colleagues in recent days of failing to articulate clearly what Labor is or to inspire public opinion about his leadership.
A poll by the Opinium for the Observer on Sunday found that voters believe Boris Johnson is still a better prime minister than Starmer, by 28% to 26%, even though Labor is constantly leading the Tories when it comes to voting.
However, Starmer’s allies believe that he has not been given enough credit to restore his party’s reputation after the disastrous outcome of the 2019 general election or to undermine Johnson’s position.
They hope to win the by-elections next week in Wakefield and point to Labor’s steady performance in the May local elections, when the party has made progress in many of the key places 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 places and which messages they are likely to like.
Domestic estimates currently show that 10% of Tory voters in 2019 in these target areas have passed their allegiance to Labor, according to the Guardian.
The party has dealt a political blow with its policy of imposing an unforeseen tax on energy companies benefiting from rising global fossil fuel prices, a plan that failed and was later passed by the government. But some lawmakers have voiced concerns about whether the party has another headline policy ready to replace it.
However, Starmer’s team is determined not to rush into a detailed list of shopping policies when there may be more than two years until the next general election. Instead, Starmer is expected to make several speeches ahead of his party’s autumn conference, outlining how Labor will formulate its campaign message.
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As the cost of living crisis is likely to be severe in any future campaign, shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves has 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 developing a high-tech industrial strategy.
Starmer has vowed to resign if police in Durham find that he violated Covid’s rules by eating curry and drinking beer with colleagues on the eve of the upcoming election in Hartlepool last May. His team thinks this is very unlikely, but the promise to start unleashing leadership in the fight between potential future candidates for Starmer.
A cloud of words created this week by the sociological group JL Partners, based on responses from 1,000 voters, showed that the adjective most commonly used by Starmer was “boring”. Other prominent descriptions include “gentle” and “weak”, but also “honest”.
An equivalent exercise for Boris Johnson showed that the most common description of the public for him is “liar”, as “incompetent” and “buffoon” are also strongly presented.
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