Starmer’s green U-turn tells us who really has the power inside Labour

While reversing the decision to drop the £28bn figure may have hurt Starmer’s reputation for responsibility, there are others in the party who will use the move to consolidate their own position, writes Andrew Grice. But they must be careful not to fall into the ‘Blair-Brown trap’ that was New Labour’s downfall

The retreat undoubtedly damages Labour’s green credentials (PA Wire)

The number 28 is no longer the figure on the minds of Team Starmer after the Labour leader’s slow, messy but inevitable U-turn on the party’s pledge to spend £28bn a year on green investment. I’m told the new number is 370 – a secret internal forecast of how many MPs Labour will have after this year’s general election.

If it happens, it will give Labour an overall majority of 90. No one in Labour will talk about the prediction or even acknowledge its existence. It’s not just that doing so would break Keir Starmer’s “no complacency” rule. It’s because senior Labour figures don’t really believe it. This is a party haunted by defeats in 1992 and 2015 when the opinion polls suggested it was on course for victory, and which believes it is quite capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory this year.

That is why the £28bn U-turn was necessary. It was the lesser of two evils because Labour had to defuse the Tories’ latest “tax bombshell”. But it is not without damage, on several fronts. It fuels the dangerous impression that Starmer is a flip-flopper who might do the same in government. Even allies admit privately this is his biggest weakness; it is harder to portray himself as a man of integrity while attacking Rishi Sunak for lacking it, as he did this week over the prime minister’s disastrous unforced error on trans rights.