For political parties, momentum is crucial. When the political winds are blowing in your favour, it feels like you can do no wrong. Mistakes and missteps are brushed aside, successes are lauded, everything you touch turns to gold. And when you have it, your opponents don’t. The opposite is true for them.
Political momentum is somewhat ethereal though. Opinion polls will give you a gist of it, but they don’t tell the whole story – you can’t really measure it. You know when you have it though, and you know when your opponents do. You certainly know when you’ve lost it.
This weekend Labour begins its annual conference as a party of government for the first time in a generation. Having recently secured the second highest majority in the party’s history and delivering the most crushing defeat to the Tories into the bargain, the momentum should be with Labour. But is it?
There is no doubt that the first months of government have been more bruising that many would have expected.
Within a matter of weeks, they had removed the whip from 7 MPs for voting against government orders, supporting an SNP motion calling for the two-child benefit cap to be scrapped.
Then came the quite remarkable decision to scrap the winter fuel allowance for all but the poorest pensioners, as part of efforts to balance a £22 billion black hole they say was left by the previous government. More than 10% of the parliamentary labour party did not vote to support the government, with 52 MPs missing the debate either with permission from the whips or without it.
No Tory Prime Minister would have considered such a move. They simply wouldn’t have got away with it – cutting universal pensioner benefits is electoral catnip given the demographics of their support. Labour’s electoral coalition is certainly geared more towards younger people, but there is no doubt that the decision has struck a raw nerve with many in the party.
There is a certain logic to making the toughest decisions as early as possible in the electoral cycle. There’s a very strong chance that things like this will be forgotten come 2029 and doing it early means you can blame it on the last government while keeping a straight face.
There is no doubt though that in the short term at least it will have left a bruise on the party and will have antagonised both Welsh and in particular Scottish Labour as they gear up for important devolved elections in 2026.
While it has been a tougher start to government than they would have chosen, there have also been some early wins. Take energy policy for example, the government has removed many of the self-defeating blocks on renewable investment in England. The ban on offshore wind has been lifted, major solar farms have been given the go-ahead, GB Energy is taking form, and the plan is being put in place to deliver clean power by 2030.
Industrial relations in the public sector – a prerequisite for improved public services – have been massively improved by the willingness to get round the table to negotiate and the swiftness in accepting the recommendations of the pay review bodies to offer significant pay increases.
Relationships between the governments in London and Edinburgh have been successfully re-set as demonstrated by the constructive working between both administrations on the future of the Grangemouth refinery which will close next year.
There are also the early signs of much more mature and cooperative relationship with the EU that may yield diplomatic and economic benefits in the years to come.
It is hard to escape though that the feeling that mood surrounding the government is one of gloom, of difficult decisions and hard sells. And while in public the impressive message discipline has continued from the campaign to corridors of power, the anonymous briefing wars have already begun in earnest.
The inheritance they have received is undoubtedly bad – the public finances are a mess, public services are even worse and the economy, while showing signs of improvement, is hardly booming.
They may well have a point that it is the worst inheritance any incoming government has received in peace time, although the 1970s might take some issue with that. But people didn’t hand Labour a historic election victory so that they could remind them how bad things are. Labour won because they promised change.
Which brings us back to the party conference and political momentum. It would be foolhardy to suggest, just yet, that the party has lost momentum, but it is hard to argue that it hasn’t stalled.
The Prime Minister’s conference speech will be an important litmus test for the new government. He and his ministers have spent the summer diagnosing the UK’s many problems and prescribing some tough medication, with much more to come in the October budget, as they search for a cure.
But the twin audiences for any conference speech – the public and the party faithful – will want more from the PM than just a restatement of how bad things are. They will want to know how he and his government will make things better and how they will do so quickly. They will want to hear him inject some much-needed hope into political debate.
If he can do that successfully he can regain the political momentum. If he can’t, the honeymoon might be well and truly over.
