The British Labour Party’s annual conference, its big media showcase of the year, went off without a hitch in Liverpool late last month.
The party has good reason to be pleased — except that, as Starmer knows, the poll bounce had less to do with Labour than with the spectacular implosion of the Conservative government’s economic policy, a month shy of Liz Truss taking the reins from former Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
And this, on its own, simply won’t be enough to guarantee a Labour triumph in the long run.
And while the full political and economic consequences of the “mini-budget” remain to be seen, sterling is still struggling to regain its footing, and a massive increase in the cost of government borrowing — which threatened the solvency of pension funds — is threatening the housing market, with mortgage lenders withdrawing products en masse.
The reason for this is simple: The last general election in 2019 was a catastrophe for Labour.
Labour also ran a chaotic campaign that degenerated into an ever-expanding list of expensive promises.