Keir Starmer (remember him?) focused his big speech on taking direct aim at Reform UK for refusing to “believe in Britain.”
But it’s been a long year — Burnham is now closing that polling gap, and the Tories, booted from office in 2024, are showing nascent signs of a recovery. So is Labour switching back to its traditional foe?
Not yet, party chair Bridget Phillipson told us. Reform, she said, remain “well-organized … are well-funded, and you know — they’re not going anywhere.” And she argued the Tories have a long, long road back to government.
3) Gordon Brown just can’t stop giving advice
In the latest sign Labour can’t quite get over its 1990s heyday, two more Cabinet ministers revealed that former PM Gordon Brown is in regular contact with them.
After Chancellor John Healey shed light on his own advice from Brown over the weekend, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the POLITICO Pub he and Brown’s most recent interaction was a phone chat while Miliband was in New York at the U.N. General Assembly. “I had a late-night phone call with him actually last week,” Miliband said. “They come thick and fast.”
Scotland Secretary Douglas Alexander told us he felt like consoling Healey about Brown’s stream of ALL-CAPS messages by telling him “the first 35 years is the worst and then you get over it.”
