When Labour MPs met to hear from their leader on Monday, there was one group who felt particularly aggrieved. In the government’s reshuffle following the resignation of Angela Rayner, the party’s powerful north-west caucus had suffered a ‘machine gunning like nothing else’, in the words of a senior party official. Some 40 per cent of the reshuffle casualties are from this region. The changes risked, in the words of one aide, ‘reopening the whole Keir and Andy psychodrama’.
Within hours, Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, had duly attacked Keir Starmer’s new ‘London-centric’ line-up. Lucy Powell, a close Burnham ally, who was sacked as leader of the Commons, announced that she was running to replace Rayner as Labour’s deputy leader. Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, has been drafted as No. 10’s preferred candidate. The race provides a litmus test of internal party opinion. ‘How many people want to be unhelpful to Keir?’ asks a loyalist MP.
It seems the answer is a lot. The Labour party has always been an uneasy coalition of factions, blocs and interests, in which geography plays its part. Wales and Scotland have been traditional power bases, and devolution has created new ones for Burnham and others in the north of England. One risk for Starmer is that, like Rishi Sunak before him, new caucuses spring up and entrench party divisions. This week’s launch of ‘Mainstream’ – a Burnham-backed soft-left group – is viewed with suspicion by some loyal to the Starmer project, who fear it amounts to a Burnham leadership vehicle.
A string of bad polls is only exacerbating Labour tensions. More than a third of the refreshed cabinet are on course to lose their seats to Reform UK at the next election, including Phillipson. The Runcorn by-election in May was a preview for forthcoming electoral battles throughout this parliament. Nigel Farage’s party seized the former Labour stronghold by just six votes.
In recent months, Reform has spread northwards. There are now more than 200 branch officers across the north-west and in excess of 150 in the north-east and north Yorkshire. Reform strategists believe Lancashire, Doncaster and County Durham are ripe for growth. Much like Harold Wilson, Labour’s greatest northern politician, Farage enjoys plotting manoeuvres while puffing on his pipe early in the morning. He believes that in 2029 he can forge a similar coalition in the north to the one Boris Johnson created ten years earlier.
The Caerphilly by-election and upcoming Welsh Senedd elections will prove instructive in how best to reach voters in post-industrial, non-metropolitan areas. Polling for Merlin Strategy suggests that 80 per cent of voters across the north want to nationalise steel and water – policies which Reform has been trumpeting. Labour MPs begrudgingly acknowledge that Farage’s message of ‘broken Britain’ has cut through in communities with depleted and dilapidated high streets.
Nigel Farage believes that in 2029 he can forge a similar coalition in the north to Boris Johnson’s in 2019
Reform’s mission in the north has been helped by the decline of the Tory campaign machine. The Harrogate and Knaresborough Conservative Association – a seat held by the Tories until last year – is typical of this picture. Its last accounts show that ‘a small number of volunteers’ now run the association and a third party is required to provide campaign support. ‘Dissatisfaction with the party at a national level’ is blamed for falling membership.
With some 12,000 council candidates required for 2026 and 2027, the Tories face real difficulty in getting enough names forward. Activists tell a grim tale of dwindling branches in which it is increasingly hard to get people to door-knock or register as candidates. Councillors say they feel like ‘lambs to the slaughter’. One summarises the mood: ‘We’re all going to get wiped out anyway so I might as well not bother with the fight.’
This process has been accelerated by Reform’s wooing of high-profile and effective councillors, such as former Tory group leaders in Lancashire, Preston and Burnley. At a national level, the party hopes that the recent defections of former MPs Sir Jake Berry and Nadine Dorries will enable Reform to access northern business and donor networks that might have once bankrolled the Tories.
Labour’s loyalists argue that talk of the government abandoning the north is overblown. In parliament, Jonathan Reynolds, the new chief whip, is a popular figure in the party, as well as a County Durham boy who will work to alleviate any regional tensions. Outside parliament, Labour is keen to stress a northern identity. The Good Growth Foundation – whose founding chairman Tim Allan is No. 10’s new executive director of communications – will shortly release polling on political attitudes in the north.
Inside Downing Street, the hope is that a crackdown on migration will retain such seats in 2029. Shabana Mahmood, the new Home Secretary, has hit the ground running. ‘I’m going to be bringing my A-game, I hope you will too,’ she told staff on arrival. ‘If you don’t, you know where the door is.’ Not everyone in Whitehall has got the message yet. A day before the reshuffle, a collection for refugee charity Care4Calais was organised in the Old Admiralty Building. ‘No fundraising was carried out,’ said a Home Office spokesman. ‘Are they serious?’ retorts a Labour aide.
Starmer hailed last week’s reset as ‘phase two’ of his government. ‘Morgan’s last gamble’ is how one Labour source prefers to describe it – a reference to Starmer’s chief of staff. The Morgan McSweeney strategy of winning over patriotic voters worked last year. But some within his party fear that next time, if the election is framed around keeping Farage out of office, they will have alienated progressive voters by trying to ‘out-Reform Reform’.
It seems extraordinary to suggest that a Prime Minister with such a commanding majority is in any kind of danger just one year after an election. Yet if the government’s performance does not improve, more Labour figures will start publicly demanding a change of strategy in the spring. For now, the debate will be conducted via the proxy war of the deputy leadership. Expect Burnham, the king across the Manchester ship canal, to lead the charge at every stage.
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