Starmer solidifies grip on power at Labour Party Conference
Labour Party Conference (LPC) officially ended this afternoon. Although much of the media has focused on low-level scandals, with the next election at least five years away and a 167 seat working majority, the most important outcome for PM Starmer this week has been rule changes that will make his current deputy leader, Angela Rayner MP, easier to replace, insulate himself from challenges from the party membership, and give the party membership less of a voice on controversial policy issues.
Our view:
PM Starmer’s gamble to offer pay settlements to unions on the National Executive Committee (NEC) to consolidate power in the Labour Party has paid off.
Labour adopted rules changes that will make it easier for MPs to elect a new leader and deputy leader. Few MPs are likely to challenge Starmer, but there would be more than enough to challenge Angela Rayner, if Starmer chose to campaign on the issue.
Starmer prioritises incrementalism and consolidating power within the Labour Party rather than appealing to legacy media, signalling politically unpopular decisions on the horizon. The Labour leadership’s silence over major policy directions reaffirms this point.
The Chancellor will likely raise taxes on the Conservatives’ traditional voting blocs i.e. the wealthy, pensioners, and businesses, at the 30 October Budget
The Conservatives months-long leadership contest is allowing Labour to avoid scrutiny during their initial months in power.
Our wider view:
Starmer changed the Labour Party’s rules, consolidating his power. Twenty percent of Labour MPs i.e., 81 MPs, can now challenge the Labour leader or deputy leader at any time rather than just annually at party conference. The change allows Starmer to bypass the more volatile and leftwing party membership if he wanted to campaign to install a new deputy leader, while also insulating himself from leadership challenges because most Labour MPs owe their seat to Starmer’s electoral success. It seems likely, therefore, that Starmer aims to replace Rayner with a more loyal MP at some point in the future. Conference also voted to remove its own ability to debate policy issues from the National Policy Forum's annual report , limiting internal party dissent about controversial topics such as the Israel/Palestine conflict that traditionally receive outsized media coverage during conference and dent Labour’s governance credibility with the wider electorate.
Starmer’s government is readying itself to make electorally unpopular decisions. Most avenues of power and decision-making in the Labour Party now effectively flow through Starmer and his allies. Within Starmer’s first three months in power, he has decided to agree favourable pay settlements with unions, change the rules to consolidate his power within the party, and allow Cabinet Secretaries to install their own loyalist junior ministers, many of whom are freshly elected MPs. With Cabinet loyalty secured, the more leftwing and sometimes problematic deputy leader more vulnerable, and more than half of Labour MPs new to the role, and therefore less likely to rebel against the government’s plans, Starmer’s government seems primed to make root and branch decisions about the UK’s economy, many of which are likely to be electorally unpopular in the short-term.
Post-LPC and ahead of the 30 October Budget, Starmer and Reeves will continue to soften the ground to raise taxes on the wealthy, pensioners, and business, while choosing winners and losers in the wider economy. Although many conference attendees agreed that Labour’s leadership have been too negative recently, this did not translate into senior politicians issuing substantive policy direction shifts during their speeches. Instead, senior Labour politicians continued to signal taxes rise on the wealthy and businesses at the upcoming Budget, blame their fiscal inheritance from the Conservatives, and promise to fix public services. Most business representatives, outside of favoured sectors like renewable energy and infrastructure, were much less enthusiastic than they were pre-election, with many openly complaining about high prices and limited access.
Sources:
Amendments (p. 14 to 17): here
Results (p. 20 - 21): here
2024 Labour Party rule book (p. 25 - 27): here