‘When they get in they will face a terrible reality’: can steady Starmer deliver what he promises? | Labour

There was no razzmattazz, no fanfare and no arty backdrop as Keir Starmer – way ahead in the polls with three weeks until election day – launched his party’s bombproof manifesto for government. The unflashy venue – the HQ of the Co-Operative Group in Manchester – was the same as when the Labour leader announced his five missions in February last year. The same posters announcing the same missions hung from the same walls. Surprise means risk and there was none of either.

One older Labour party member recalled the Sheffield rally of 1992 when Neil Kinnock’s pre-election over-confidence was thought by some to have contributed to eventual defeat. The vibe was the reverse. “We are certainly not repeating that. It still pains me,” he said.

Starmer strode in without a jacket, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled halfway up, exactly as they are in the photo on the front of the 130-page manifesto booklet. The impression – deliberately created – was of a work in progress, not job done.

Speakers from the stage knew not to refer to their leader as “the next prime minister”. The handpicked audience knew not to whoop. The shadow cabinet, sitting in the wings, applauded earnestly. Afterwards they seemed so determined not to presume power was in their grasp that they even shied away from admitting how well it all went. “Steady as we go,” said one.

When asked why there were no new policies held back for manifesto day, Starmer replied that he was not one for pulling rabbits out of hats. This was serious, unlike Boris Johnson or Liz Truss. “I am running as a candidate to run the country not a candidate to run the circus.”

Labour has got its safety-first tactics down to a tee, presenting Starmer as reassuring, low-risk and credible, and offering no hostages to fortune.

By midweek the Tories were so desperate at their failure to puncture Labour’s defensive shield that they tried another tack, reserved normally for the final days of desperately failing campaigns.

Starmer would end up with a “super majority” and a “blank cheque”, the Tories said, unless voters came to their senses. It was to all intents and purposes an admission of looming defeat, and merely an attempt to limit the extent of it.

Today, the Tory peer Paul Goodman, who first suggested that his party warn about the “blank cheque” in the Observer two weeks ago, says if that doesn’t work over the next fortnight, Sunak may have to take a leaf out of John Major’s book from 1992 when he saw off Kinnock. “Some have advised Sunak to take some risks – ditch the stage-managed set-pieces, roll his sleeves up and get out his soap box, like John Major in 1992. Take his case to the people.”

Without doubt Labour’s political equivalent of “parking the bus” (football terminology for packing the defence) is working as the Tories’ campaign careers further off the rails.

The revelation in the Guardian last week that Sunak’s parliamentary aide, Craig Williams, had put a £100 bet on a July election three days before Sunak called one, in the hope of making a few hundred quid more, represented a tawdry new low for the Conservatives.

But while many Labour supporters can see the logic behind Starmer’s campaign strategy, there are plenty who worry in private – as the prize comes closer – that it could come back to haunt him and his party once they have the keys to Downing Street.

One senior Labour figure with experience of government summed up his concerns, and those of numerous senior people across a number of policy sectors, over the manifesto.

“You can see what they are doing, of course you can,” he said. “But I come away from reading this thinking it is a manifesto that just knocks things down the road. I see lots of reviews and vague aspirations. But what I don’t see is a mandate to really change things.

“The problem with that is when they get in they will face a terrible reality. There will be no honeymoon because the pressures are too great. They have framed it all around change but not really said how they will deliver it.

“On a practical level things will build up very quickly. Councils are going bankrupt; university finances are in crisis. Social care is in crisis. Child poverty is rising. Where is the plan for change? How, for instance, do you reform local government finance without reforming social care? It says almost nothing on social care reform.”

The left, the unions and the voluntary sector would all want payback for staying loyal, and quite fast, he said. “The real worry is whether an approach that appears tactically astute at the time comes back to bite him. There is a party management risk here.”

The overarching issue that experts across all the main policy areas say is being dodged – by both the Tories and Labour – is the most important of all: money.

Paul Johnson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies said after the parties’ launches that Labour was involved in a “conspiracy of silence” over the challenges to come. Delivering actual change would “almost certainly” mean putting lots more money on the table, he said. But it was unclear where it would come from under a Starmer-led Labour government. Their tax and spend plans did not seem to match their rhetoric about rebuilding the country. “Labour’s manifesto offers no indication that there is a plan for where the money would come from to finance this,” said Johnson. By trying to be fiscally credible in the eyes of voters, they were in fact being the reverse in the eyes of economists.

Starmer insists he can deliver the highest economic growth in the G7 through relaxing planning rules, building more houses, Labour’s green energy plans and a new industrial strategy. He also says he will deliver on his growth target without rejoining the EU single market or customs union. Economists point, however, to the continuing drag that being outside the EU’s main economic structures will have on UK growth.

Ahmet Kaya, principal economist at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, said: “The impact of Brexit on UK GDP is around 2% to 3%. So if Brexit had not happened, UK GDP would have been 2% to 3% higher [by now]. Unfortunately, this impact will increase to 5% to 6% by 2030.”

Across the public sector, in areas where there is an all too obvious need for investment to prevent things getting even worse, there is broadly speaking an acceptance that Labour will be preferable to the Tories. But there are many anxieties nonetheless.

Senior figures in the NHS are focusing in particular on the need for more capital investment, to repair the crumbling NHS infrastructure and to help retain staff.

Last week Sarah Wollaston, the former Tory MP and ex-chair of the Commons select committee on health, announced she had resigned as chair of NHS Devon because of cuts she says she was being asked to sign off.

She said the “final straw” was the way the NHS punished trusts that struggled most with surging demand. If they overspent on their revenue account they were punished by having their capital spending pared back. Wollaston says the rules are ridiculous.

“If you are an underperforming trust they have introduced this system where they take away more of your capital. It is particularly perverse that you punish people who need it the most and actually take away some of their capacity to get back on track. Systems like Devon desperately need more capital to be more efficient.

“Across the NHS we now have an £11.6bn backlog of infrastructure repairs. That is just the fabric of the hospitals. People can see this when they go into a hospital … some of the infrastructure is frankly shocking.”

She blames her former party for neglecting the NHS over 14 years and failing to do more to tackle public health problems such as diabetes and obesity early enough. While she is encouraged by what Labour has to say on the NHS she insists it will have to act straight away, not least by changing what she calls the “capital punishment” rules for parts of the NHS which overspend. Labour, however, said yesterday that it had no plans to do so because this would mean an increase in overall borrowing.

In the state education sector it is hard to find a headteacher who isn’t desperate to see the back of the Conservatives.

Vic Goddard, executive principal of Passmores secondary academy in Essex, says: “If they get in again I would be looking for the quickest way out.” They had made his job “impossible”.

While many heads welcome Labour’s plans for 6,500 new teachers, and see it as evidence that at last education is being seen as a priority, they say it won’t solve the nationwide shortage.

They are also pleased to hear Labour talking about teacher retention. Last year almost as many teachers fled the sector as joined it.

But persuading teachers to stay in the profession will mean addressing some bigger issues that aren’t being discussed, and these again will involve more money.

Spending per child at schools in England has suffered an unprecedented 14-year freeze and is currently at 2010 levels in real terms, according to the latest analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. Goddard says: “Teachers are desperate to do better for children. But they need the resources to do that.”

Crumbling buildings are another massive issue with buckets under classroom ceilings, broken boilers and roofs in urgent need of repair everywhere. The National Audit Office found 700,000 children are being educated in buildings that need major work, with a £2bn annual shortfall. “That’s just not going to happen, is it?” says Matt Jessop, head of Crosthwaite primary school in the Lake District. “We’ve seen significant cuts to everything,” he adds. “A decade of damage. The only way forward is to reverse that.”

Simon Kidwell, president of the National Association of Head Teachers, says the number one issue when he travels around the country is the crisis in supporting children with special educational needs. Mainstream schools say they are struggling to look after growing numbers of children with increasingly complex needs, and the teaching assistants they need to support them are so badly paid many are switching to Sainsbury’s or Costa Coffee. Meanwhile, the costs associated with looking after children with special educational needs are pushing councils to the brink. “It’s a huge problem and it doesn’t feel like anyone has any answers,” Kidwell says.

With less than three weeks to go Labour remains in a very strong position to land a large majority in the House of Commons. Today’s Opinium poll for the Observer gives Starmer’s party a very healthy 17-point lead over the Tories. But both the main parties have seen small falls in their vote while Reform and the Lib Dems are both up two points. In Labour HQ this may cause just a flutter of anxiety. Two weeks ago the Labour lead was 20 points.

Some believe the small parties could benefit further from the Tories’ implosion and Labour’s deliberately risk-averse campaign. Prof Robert Ford, of Manchester University, says Labour’s caution could mean some on the left who feel dissatisfied with the lack of radicalism in its offering put their crosses by other parties such as the Greens, while others may just be bored by its election campaign and – believing Labour will win anyway – not turn up to vote. Polling expert Prof John Curtice added: “Basically the Tories are losing this election rather than Labour winning it.”

For Starmer and his team the cautious approach looks like getting them across the line with some ease on July 4. Whether it will work for them after that – or come back to haunt them in power – is another question altogether.