Keir Starmer faces 2 challenges in Liverpool

Good morning from Liverpool. Labour is gathering for its annual conference.

I’m reliably informed that there will not be an Arsenal gag in Keir Starmer’s speech on Tuesday, in part because the Labour leader was sufficiently bearish about his team’s chances against Manchester City that there was no prospect of it being something worth joking about. (In what is, I think, an unprecedented event, Arsenal Women hosted City Women at the Emirates on the same day that the men’s team travelled to play City at the Etihad, with both games finishing 2-2.)

But in many ways, Arsenal’s performances against City are a pretty good analogy for where Labour finds itself. A score draw against City, given the circumstances, is a terrific result. For Labour activists, the party entering government with a majority for only the third time in a century is a moment for celebration. But in all three cases, supporters are haunted by the sense that they could be doing better still were it not for avoidable mistakes. Some more thoughts on that below. (I promise no more Arsenal chat.)

The City and the City

Labour is hosting two conferences. One is for party members who, however they felt about the government’s performance when they arrived in Liverpool, realise that the party has won an election (not something it does all that often) and are feeling celebratory.

The other is for people who work for the Labour government, whether as ministers or special advisers. They are down in the dumps about the various stories enveloping the new administration. The scandals over freebies. The dysfunction in and around Downing Street. The mood of despair in the party, the country and from investors thanks to the government’s gloomy rhetoric.

The big thing that ministers have been trying to do in their speeches is turn around that mood of doom. Rachel Reeves in her speech to party conference today, will rule out a return to austerity as part of the government’s course correction.

But what they can’t do is fix the problems in Downing Street. The way to understand the various stories about rows between Sue Gray, the chief of staff, and Morgan McSweeney, the chief electoral strategist, is to see them not as literal descriptions of the government’s divides, but as a sign of broader unease about a disorganised and rudderless Downing Street. Gray and McSweeney are the two people most likely to give cabinet ministers an answer one way or another when they want something out of Number 10, and as a result both are the subject of grumbling about the government’s direction.

One way that Gray has “become the story” is that she is now being blamed for things that aren’t her fault. For instance, some ministers chose to let their teams know who would be joining them in government and who needed to look for jobs before the election. Others let their aides find out after July 4. But among aides who learnt that they were surplus to requirements after the election, Gray has become a scapegoat for decisions made by government ministers.

But the government has real problems that can be blamed on the teething troubles within Downing Street. Starmer has two big tasks at his conference. The first is to deliver a speech that Labour activists can cheer about. The second is to show that he can get a grip and reform a Downing Street operation that currently looks incapable of avoiding scandal and disarray.

Now try this

I had a lovely dinner at Maray, a lovely Middle Eastern restaurant that now has two venues in Liverpool, one on Bold Street, the second at the Albert Dock, where the Labour party conference takes place.

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