IS RISHI THE MAN TO EXPLOIT STARMER WEAKNESSES?

Labour’s addiction to wokeism needs to be highlighted

We want to widen the divide and show him up as slippery

THE Tory official was trying to look on the bright side. ‘I know we’re in a hole, but I genuinely think we can turn things round,’ he told me. ‘Rishi’s starting to get things back under control. The party may be moaning about wind farms, but we’re not facing any serious rebellions. And Starmer isn’t really that popular. He’s vulnerable.’

Labour’s leader isn’t looking all that wobbly. A week that saw him solidify a 20-point opinion lead, and win the Chester by-election by a margin not posted in that seat since William IV was king, ended with Sajid Javid becoming the latest Tory MP to announce he was fleeing Westminster one step ahead of the voters.

But some of Javid’s colleagues are made of sterner stuff.

‘We’ve been on the back foot for about a year,’ a Minister explained. ‘Partygate and Liz Truss’s premiership meant we couldn’t put Labour under any sort of pressure. But now we’re going to get a clearer run.

‘Rishi will be the guy taking us into the Election, and we’ll get the space to start making some proper political arguments.’

Inside the Conservative Campaign Headquarters on Matthew Parker Street, a group of youthful but keeneyed strategists are pulling together a plan for derailing Sir Keir Starmer’s triumphal march up Whitehall. And it’s a plan that centres around Starmer himself.

‘A key area we’ll focus on is his time as DPP [Director of Public Prosecutions],’ one senior Tory adviser revealed. ‘We’re sure we’ll find some skeletons.’

There’s long been a belief that Starmer’s five-year tenure as the nation’s chief prosecutor would provide the Tories with some rich, populist pickings. ‘We’re going to remind voters that he was a liberal civil-rights lawyer, and how that will have fed into some of his decision-making,’ the Tory strategist added.

When Boris Johnson employed this tactic in February, and challenged Starmer on his failure as DPP to prosecute the DJ Jimmy Savile, there was a swift backlash. But Tory HQ believes Starmer’s continued burnishing of his prosecutorial credentials – he boasted recently about his time tackling people-smugglers and violence against women – makes his record fair game.

A second issue is the Labour leader’s age. ‘He’s starting to look a bit old,’ claimed one Tory of the recently turned 60-year-old. ‘If Starmer manages to win an Election in two years’ time, he’ll be drawing a state pension during his first term in No 10.

Contrast that with Rishi, who looks young, fit and energetic. Labour will struggle to portray Starmer as the change candidate.’

Labour officials are relaxed about these sort of attack lines. Painting Starmer as someone with experience forms a key part of their own strategy. And they claim their own internal polling shows Rishi Sunak remains firmly lashed to the Tories’ decade in power.

Which is why Tory strategists are focusing and refining their assault on Starmer, but not making him their sole target.

‘We think Labour’s team looks weak,’ a Minister said. ‘Especially to those voters who remember the New Labour era. Lot’s of people say, “Starmer’s no Blair.” And they’re right. But where are the big beasts on the front bench, like Gordon Brown, Jack Straw, David Blunkett and others?’ The fact that tackling the Starmer Insurgency is still in its infancy proves the measure of the task facing Conservative officials. But it’s also a reflection of the havoc caused by the recent chaotic transitions from the Johnson to Truss to Sunak administrations.

‘When we took over, the co-ordination between Conservative HQ and Downing Street had basically collapsed,’ one former Truss adviser told me. ‘There was nothing there. Matthew Parker Street was a shell.’ The vacuum this created has been there for all to see. Especially in the method of attack Sunak initially deployed against Starmer, but has quietly dropped. In his first Prime Minister’s Questions, Sunak charged: ‘The Right Honourable and learned gentleman talked about party first and country second. Perhaps he can explain why it was that, a few years ago, he was supporting the Right Honourable member for Islington North [Jeremy Corbyn]?’

No10 aides cheerily briefed this stick would be used to club Starmer – who served in Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet for more than four years – at every Wednesday session until polling day.

It didn’t work. Starmer has his faults, but he is no closet Corbynite.

And as Tory strategists have belatedly realised, the cleverer move is to try to leverage the antipathy of red-blooded Corbynites towards the man they feel betrayed them.

‘The way Starmer ditched the ten pledges is something we need to focus on,’ a Tory official admitted, referring to his flip-flopping over the key promises made during the leadership campaign. ‘That way we widen the divide with Labour’s Left and show Starmer up as slippery.’

Another issue the Tory Election planners need to grip is the economy. Especially as Starmer and his Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves are currently being allowed to get away with fiscal murder.

When Liz Truss took over, her team began collating a spreadsheet detailing Labour’s spending and borrowing commitments. ‘There were billions on it – £28billion on their Green New Deal alone,’ a Truss ally recalls. ‘But then we got thrown out, and it all got lost in the handover.’

It needs to be found again. As does a way of exploiting one final weakness: Labour’s dangerous addiction to wokeism. Several of Starmer’s allies acknowledge that aligning their party’s metropolitan liberal base with the voters they must recapture in Red Wall constituencies represents their greatest challenge.

‘Look at issues like immigration and trans rights,’ one Shadow frontbencher told me. ‘There’s a big gap between where a lot of our activists are and where the electorate is.’

This is one reason why several Shadow Ministers are privately praying that Eddie Izzard’s highprofile bid to become Labour’s candidate for Sheffield Central fails.

But again, the transition from Truss to Sunak has hindered Tory strategists’ efforts to get to grips with Labour on these so-called social ‘wedge issues’. As one Minister told me: ‘Truss was planning to hammer Starmer on this stuff. She was ready to tell him, “You may not know what a woman is, but I do!” But now we’ve got Rishi. And let’s be honest, he comes across as much of a London liberal as Starmer does.’

There are still two long years for the strategists in Matthew Parker Street to hammer some sort of plan into shape. But the opinion polls remain stubbornly immobile. If the rumours are to be believed, even more challenging by-elections are on the horizon. And the slow trickle of Tory MPs exiting Westminster is threatening to turn into a flood.

Sir Keir Starmer does have his weaknesses. But Rishi Sunak has yet to show his party – or the country – he’s the man who knows how to exploit them.