Keir Starmer tells Labour frontbench to ready policies for spring election

Keir Starmer has ordered his frontbench team to finalise their manifesto policies within weeks as Labour moves on to a campaign footing before what officials believe will be a spring election.

The Labour leader has told shadow ministers to have their policy proposals ready by mid-January in time for the manifesto to be completed by 8 February. He will also embark on a series of public question-and-answer sessions between January and March to highlight each of Labour’s five missions, which he hopes will define the election.

Labour has even scrapped plans to hold a shadow spending review to spell out how it would fund departments in government, as shadow ministers do not believe they will have time to complete it before an election.

Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, has said he intends to call the election next year, but opinion is split on whether it is likely to come in the spring or autumn.

One senior Labour source said: “Sunak says he has not yet made up his mind about when the election will be, but we think if you watch what he does rather than what he says, everything points towards the spring.”

Another added: “It’s about making sure everyone is completely match-fit, even if May doesn’t happen.”

Ravinder Athwal, Labour’s head of policy, will be in charge of the manifesto-writing process, officials say, with each shadow department feeding into him.

Many of Labour’s policies have already been agreed, including reforming the planning system, setting up a nationally owned energy company and introducing breakfast clubs in primary schools.

However some major questions need to be resolved, including whether to keep the party’s commitment to spend £28bn on green schemes by the end of the parliament and whether to stick to a pledge to replace the existing childcare funding system.

Several meetings have taken place in recent weeks between shadow cabinet members and senior advisers to discuss the manifesto, including with Sue Gray, the former Cabinet Office official who became Starmer’s chief of staff in the autumn.

Labour sources said further meetings would take place in the first few weeks of January before Starmer begins his pre-election tour of the country.

Once a general election is called the party will then hold a “clause V meeting”, bringing together senior party representatives, MPs and trade union leaders to sign off the manifesto.

While Labour is expected to hold back attention-grabbing policies for the crunch weeks of the election campaign, with a list of options being prepared, sources said the manifesto was mostly finalised because there was a high bar for new policies with tax and spending commitments attached.

One said the work up to January was about making the document “bombproof” for the short campaign rather than the wholesale development of new ideas. If Sunak decided to go to the polls later in the year, the document could then be added to or amended, sources said.

The manifesto process has put paid to plans for Labour to decide exactly how it would allocate resources to individual departments should it win the election, however, meaning it would have to answer those questions once in government.

“We had hoped to be able to conduct our own comprehensive spending review but that is no longer going to be possible,” said one shadow minister. “We simply haven’t got time.”

Sunak can call an election to be held at any point before 28 January 2025. The prime minister has said, however, he will do so next year, leaving two broad options.

He could announce the election soon after the budget in March, meaning it would be held in late April or early May. A later election would probably be held in the autumn, given many voters are away in summer. One option would be for Sunak to announce it at the Conservative party conference in October, leading to a vote in late November or early December.