POLITICAL BAZBALL
How the General Election battle began this week as Rishi threw caution to the wind
A WEEK is a long time in politics, as the old saying goes, but two weeks really can change the weather.
When Parliament returned from its long summer break, Labour MPs were cock-a-hoop and Tory ministers were despairing.
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Twenty points behind in the polls, most Conservatives moping around the Commons were convinced the game was up and next year’s election a foregone and bloody conclusion.
Sir Keir Starmer pulled off a slick reshuffle of his top team, and after a washout August of Government chaos on the borders and in the classrooms, there was only one team that were smiling: the reds.
But as MPs slope off again for the party conference season — likely the last before the country goes to the polls — it’s the blues that have a spring in their step.
And it’s clear Rishi Sunak is not going down without a fight — firing the starting pistol on the General Election campaign by throwing caution to the wind.
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Feared by even his biggest supporters to be too risk-averse and technocratic, Sunak threw off the shackles this week by tearing up Britain’s unrealistic net zero targets.
Brexit betrayal
Tory party boss Greg Hands — who is running two crunch by-election campaigns — reported back to No10 that the green climbdown was “a hit on the doorstep”.
On Thursday night Sunak’s chief aide Liam Booth Smith — not famed for his smiley demeanour — gave his weekly debrief to spinners.
One present said: “It was the most upbeat we’ve been for a very long time after some pretty s**t times.”
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And he vowed the PM was just getting started with a big policy overhaul that will send “commentator types on Twitter” into a rage.
With what has been dubbed “political Bazball” in No10 — after the England cricket team’s extremely high-risk but high-reward tactics this summer — Sunak insists there is more to come.
HS2 is likely to be scaled back amid off-the-rails costs, and persistent chatter in Westminster is growing about abolishing inheritance tax but upping capital gains tax on second home sales and stocks and shares profits.
But critics were quick to point out that thanks to the controversial Bazball tactics, the Ashes ended up a draw, however entertaining, with some of the risks taken by skipper Ben Stokes going badly wrong.
But while Australia were a fearsome opponent, Sir Keir Starmer has been dropping a fair few catches of late.
Finally breaking cover on immigration, the Labour boss ended up in a mess after suggesting he would be open to a European-wide scheme to share the burden of asylum.
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A trip to The Hague to trumpet his small boats plan backfired amid claims Britain would become a “dumping ground” for EU migrants.
Days later, at a leftie love-in in Canada, he assured an audience of liberal elites there would be “no divergence” with Brussels under a Labour government.
And the very same week in Paris he met Emmanuel Macron — a move said to have been brokered by Tony Blair — just as the French touted the UK as a future EU “associate member” candidate.
Labour hastily insisted this was a “non-starter”, but it was catnip for Tory ministers who were sent out on to the airwaves to declare a Brexit betrayal.
While it may looks like Starmer is walking into bear traps, they are of his own making.
It’s clear that his natural instinct, be it on immigration, regulation and even fighting crime, is to turn to the Continent.
And the Tories think they are on to a winner by hanging Brussels around his neck every week until polling day.
A campaign attack has been chewed over by Tory strategists of “more debt, more taxes, more Europe.”
But is it any surprise that Starmer is tacking back to his Remainer comfort zone, when you look at who is advising him?
The Labour leader has not only turned to Tony Blair — the party’s three-time election winner — for advice, but seemingly his entire political playbook.
The pair speak regularly, both in private and public.
The recent shake-up of Starmer’s top team has seen no less than seven New Labour veterans bag plum positions around the shadow cabinet table.
It included big promotions for ex-Blairite aides Hilary Benn, Pat McFadden, Peter Kyle and Liz Kendall — all once devout Remainers.
The Opposition’s dingy offices in a remote part of Parliament are also stuffed with New Labour figures.
His director of strategy, Deborah Mattinson, ran polling for New Labour.
His top spin doctor, Matthew Doyle, cut his teeth under Alastair Campbell before heading up Blair’s private office upon leaving No 10.
His senior adviser, Peter Hyman, was Blair’s longtime speechwriter.
The list goes on.
Even the Blairite Prince of Darkness Lord Mandelson — a political pussycat somehow still not out of lives — is back and offering advice.
Guilt by association
Then enter Sue Gray — the career Whitehall mandarin turned Partygate executioner brought in to take charge after months of too many cooks jockeying for control.
Although a new addition, she is a friendly, familiar face for those who remember her from their last spell in government.
One shadow minister said: “She was great then, and she’s great now.
“Sue is already whittling away at all our departments and finding the holes.
“Some people are being found out pretty quickly because they’re not across the detail.”
Earlier this month the boss of Britain’s biggest union said Sir Keir was turning Labour into “a Nineties tribute act”.
It was not meant as a compliment.
For many of the party’s rank and file — and the voters — the name Blair is still mud and his ten-year premiership represents a stain that still haunts them today.
Sir Keir was only too aware of this divisiveness during his own leadership campaign and was at pains to avoid guilt by association.
He even refused to say that he was politically closer to the New Labour boss than leftie car-crash Jeremy Corbyn.
More than three years on, he is not so shy.
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A Starmer ally said: “The whole Blair thing doesn’t really bother us. Obviously they speak regularly, and it’s a great thing to have his experience.”
Whether the voters agree remains to be seen . . .
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