It’ll take more than a shadow cabinet reshuffle to win Labour voters back

Sean O’Grady explains why Keir Starmer needs to think bigger if his party is to truly challenge Boris Johnson when the country next goes to the polls

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer visits Milton Keynes police station on Monday, while on his party’s campaign ahead of the May elections (PA)

In a tight corner, with few real options open to them and wanting to be seen to “do something” about a bout of unpopularity, political leaders, in government and in opposition, often take the option of “refreshing” their frontbench team. For a prime minister it at least has the advantage that it can be spun as an act of decisive leadership (even though it is more likely to be blind panic), and the new incumbents will at least be in power and in a position to make some real changes. Few, of any, cabinet reshuffles have transformed the fortunes of any government, except perhaps at the margin and offering the gossips some material for profiles of “the next prime minister”.

An opposition leader has not even those scant benefits to look to, and the speculation about changes can destabilise an already pressurised team. So it is with the position of the shadow chancellor, Anneliese Dodds. She set out on Sunday for a five-mile run in support of the Oxford Hospitals Charity with some particularly unkind coverage in the press. She was, apparently, for the chop. Sir Keir Starmer, or his allies, were reported to believe that she was highly intelligent but not as effective as she might be at getting the messages across. The likes of Rachel Reeves and Lisa Nandy were offered up as possible replacements. Yvette Cooper, a former Treasury minister, is another female Labour MP who is qualified for their role.

Tempting as it might be, though, it would certainly look a little panicky. With an important round of elections coming up in May, the last thing Labour needs is a fresh round of stories about splits and failing cabinet ministers. Besides, Ms Dodds is hardly responsible for the recovery in the fortunes of Boris Johnson and the Conservatives, relative to Labour. The reason for that is as plain as a needle going into arm – the transformation of the Covid crisis since the arrival of the vaccines, and the (comparative) lack of mass disruption caused by Brexit. In the year since he became leader, Starmer has narrowed the Conservative lead considerably, and overtaken them at times, and has looked like a competent alternative prime minister.

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Starmer, Dodds, Reeves, Jon Ashcroft and the rest of the shadow team cannot be expected to transform Labour’s fortunes inside twelve months, pandemic or not. Opposition is a long haul, and Labour has a longer journey than most. Put simply, Starmer and Labour are still having to live down the disaster of the 2019 general election, only 15 months ago. A lot has happened since then, but the British public is not going to base its choice of leadership in 2024 or 2025 on the basis of a pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

As so often in the past, a moderate Labour leader is outperforming his party, because it is distrusted by the electorate, but it is perceptions of the party – extreme, profligate, divided, incompetent, unpatriotic, on the side of criminals, that sort of thing – that deter voters from supporting it. The press and social media, and indeed the government machine, may be responsible for spreading disinformation and plain lies about Labour, but that is, alas, a given. For a politician to be complaining about such things is, as the old saying goes, like a sailor complainant about the weather.

Keir Starmer has denied reports he is ready to replace Annaliese Dodds with a new shadow chancellor (Getty)

For now, at least, Starmer seem not for panicking, whatever his private thoughts.

On a local election campaign visit in Milton Keynes, wherein lies the kind of seat Labour needs to win, Sir Keir told reporters: “Anneliese Dodds has my confidence, she has my full confidence, she is doing a fantastic job. And we are one team, and we have got really important elections in May.”

After that, Dodds may find herself tweeting about taking on an exciting new role. The truth, if it would be any comfort to her, is that there are no examples of a shadow chancellor being replaced and the fortunes of a sick party recently hammered in the polls from becoming transformed. The Conservatives tried it by putting the charismatic Michael Portillo in to “save the pound” and replace the workaday Francis Maude, and at the subsequent election in 2001, they made a net gain of one Commons seat. Indeed, a powerful shadow chancellor with ideas of their own can actually generate more confusion and discord, as between Portillo and his boss William Hague, or between John Smith and Neil Kinnock, or to lesser degree Ed Balls and Ed Miliband. A shadow chancellor, like a shadow cabinet, is of little use without some attractive ideas and popular policies. If they are exciting enough and speak to the voters then they virtually sell themselves. It is not entirely Dodds’ fault that Labour’s “offer” is a little lacking.