In three months, the noise surrounding this Labour administration has crescendoed to an intensity that Conservative governance only achieved after years and at least two prime ministers.
Every action of the government triggers some manner of media-political furore — and Keir Starmer, ever at the storm’s centre, is inevitably ascribed the worst of intentions. From the government’s response to the summer riots, to the decision to settle pay disputes with striking unions, the early prison release scheme, the Chagos Islands handover — and, this week, a LinkedIn post by some obscure Labour staffer.
No measure is immune from the churn of noisy controversy that Starmer repeatedly pledged to end in opposition. Politics, if the newspaper front pages are anything to go by, still treads laboriously on the lives of ordinary Britons. That, of course, is before one broaches Labour’s “freebies” woes — or the stories of court intrigue that preceded Sue Gray’s demise as No 10 chief of staff.
Now this is by no means inexplicable. The incentive structure of the months-long Conservative leadership contest has seen the candidates ratchet toward increasingly hysterical criticisms. The existence of Reform in parliament, meanwhile, has sharpened Conservative partisanship. The prospective Tory chiefs, at every turn, must implicitly rebuke Nigel Farage’s claim that he is the real “leader of the opposition”. For the next five years, they will be exposed to accusations they are suddenly going soft on Starmerism.
Still, Starmer insists that he is not bothered by his baying critics. “All those shouts and bellows, the bad faith advice from people who still hanker for the politics of noisy performance”, the prime minister told Labour conference in September, “it’s water off a duck’s back. Mere glitter on a shirt cuff. It’s never distracted me before, and it won’t distract me now”.
Westminster’s “noisy” nature is something Starmer, not an innately political beast, is understood to deplore. But there is no disguising the fact the prime minister’s own mistakes and missteps have compounded the unforgiving political reality he now operates in. This isn’t just about day-to-day media management or No 10’s reticence to engage with an unravelling story; it has got rather a lot more to do with the upcoming budget — both in terms of its framing and timing.
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The countdown to the autumn budget has been protracted and bitter. Rachel Reeves’ pronouncement on the existence of a £22 billion fiscal “blackhole”, months ago in July, succeeded in fomenting the requisite feverish interest. But as the weeks passed, and Labour doubled down on its chosen grim economic narrative, this energy has been harnessed increasingly at Starmer’s expense. The result, as Blair-era adviser John McTernan recently suggested, has been the creation of a political “vacuum” at the heart of government. “It feels like it has been a terrible political miscalculation”, he told Times Radio earlier this month, “to leave the budget for so long.”
He added: “You define yourself in your budget because that sets what you are going to do to public services, what you are going to do to tax, what you are going to do to spending.”
What is particularly punishing, McTernan goes on, has been “to leave the defining element of what you are doing in public services to be taking the winter fuel allowance from 10 million pensioners — that is the thing that stands there as the definition.”
This view has emerged as a nervous point of consensus among Blairite strategists-turn-commentators. Alistair Campbell, former communications chief in No 10, agrees with McTernan that the delay in delivering the budget has created the “sense of people not being quite sure what the government is about”.
“I think the point about the budget is really important”, Campbell told the BBC, “When Margaret Thatcher won in 1979 Geoffrey Howe delivered the budget five weeks after the election. Gordon Brown in 1997, he delivered the budget eight weeks after the election.
“David Cameron and George Osborne in 2010, six weeks. We are having to wait almost 16 weeks since the election and I think that is what creates this sense of people not being quite sure what the government is about.”
As such, Starmer hasn’t been blown off course by media “noise”, as much as his government has yet to resolve on a course. The result has been a kind of political phoney war, in which every government announcement is overshadowed by the inexorable drip-drip of budget reports and ministerial non-denials. The sense of drift this inspires, crucially, is the antithesis of the insurgent government Labour planned to pursue.
There are reasons for the budget’s late timing, that said. Consider the official line, proclaimed by defence secretary John Healey in response to McTernan and Campbell’s comments, that Liz Truss’ failed premiership showed “what happens when you try and rush a budget”. Labour is also the first incoming administration to reckon with the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), which needs 10 weeks to produce its forecasts. The consecutive summer and conference recesses further narrowed Labour’s room for manoeuvre.
In any case, the good news for Labour is that this politically unsustainable situation is fast approaching its terminus. On Wednesday, the current derisive hum will quiet and Labour, finally, will set out its stall on its own terms. The government will be in control in a way it hasn’t felt for weeks.
The bad news is that the budget no longer just requires an audacious act of economic escapology — but a consummate political performance too. The government’s recent missteps, made in the vacuum of the pre-budget proxy war, mean Reeves’ budget is increasingly seen as a relaunch moment.
And yet, the budget Reeves presents on 30th October is roundly expected to please almost no one — let alone Labour’s noise-generating critics. On Wednesday, the chancellor must fill the Treasury’s “black hole” while working to limit any controversy surrounding the government’s revenue-raising measures — while ensuring Labour MPs are placated by more hopeful proposals — while signalling to the electorate the “change” really is beginning — and while ensuring that Labour continues to own the mantle of fiscal responsibility.
Finally, she must do so while keeping within the spirit, at least, of the narrow fiscal framework set out in the manifesto. (In other words, Labour must have a plausible counter to accusations of pledge-busting). And linking these considerations are cruel intertwining trade-offs and traps that Labour must delicately navigate. Can Reeves, for instance, placate Labour MPs (stirred by the party’s winter fuel row), while vaunting the government’s fiscal responsibility? If so, does that mean the budget’s revenue-raising measures will be more controversial than anticipated? Reeves, in the end, doesn’t just need to balance the books this budget — she must also locate a sustainable equilibrium for a series of overlapping and competing political imperatives.
What is nonetheless true is that, on Wednesday, Reeves will need to advance a more meaningful narrative than that of fiscal probity. After all, rolling tanks onto Tory lawns was prudent politics in opposition — but in government, Labour can now set the course to greener pastures.
Stories in recent weeks suggest Labour is cautiously seeking to reshape the terms of the political and economic debate — something that is the right of any elected government, let alone one with a majority of 165. Reeves’ decision to alter the fiscal rules and hints at progressive tax rises are tentative signals that Labour is exploring the political space available to it — despite the party’s falling poll numbers, despite the crippling noise.
Excessive caution, in the end, would serve to sustain the pre-budget vacuum and liven the tumult that surrounds Labour. After months of relative monotony, it’s time to see what this government is really made of.
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on X/Twitter here.
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