Giant Labour poll leads, calls for price controls, more walkouts – a new normal?

Good morning. Some two-thirds of voters back price controls on essential goods, while 40 per cent oppose the conventional wisdom that you hike interest rates to curb inflation, versus 22 per cent in favour, according to a BMG poll for the i.

Labour MP Richard Burgon has called for price caps, but the opposition and government frontbenches alike have voiced scepticism about such radical market intervention, and very few voices call for a redrawn Bank of England remit.

Whether such changes would work wonders or spectacularly backfire, it’s striking to see the economic crisis busting post-Thatcher taboos and making the unthinkable thinkable once more. We may have had 13 years of Conservatism, but the Tories imposing energy price caps the right once dubbed ‘Marxist’, furlough wage subsidies to sustain employment, a rhetorical levelling-up agenda and even Brexit have already shown the centre ground is not set in stone.

For an apparently “Conservative country that occasionally votes Labour”, the public can sometimes be surprisingly receptive to bold ideas. Of course the big problem is trusting Labour or indeed any government to deliver it – with the Tories’ handling of Brexit and the ‘mini-budget’ not a ringing endorsement for radicalism per se.

Is an 18-point-plus Labour poll lead the ‘new normal?

Labour’s leadership will see a much stronger endorsement of its much more cautious strategy in the latest polls, seemingly not dented even by its one-in, one-out approach to policy these days.

As More in Common’s Luke Tryl notes, an 18- to 25-point Labour lead over the Tories “appears to be settling”, and Labour will hope it’s the “new normal without a major sea change in conditions”.

And as JL Partners pollster Scarlett Maguire writes for LabourList today, even if its focus group participants knew little about Starmer, his values or policies, most said they’d vote Labour anyway and he could still land a ’97-style swing.

Maguire argues Starmer should “clarify who he is” though. On the personal side at least Starmer does seem increasingly confident citing his own background, recently talking about the “anxiety” and “shame” of his family not being able to pay bills (and you can read more about him channeling his father’s experiences into plugging a “respect” agenda for workers here).

It’ll be interesting to see if and how he makes the political personal with his major “opportunity” mission speech this Thursday.

Graduate-led nurseries and local government

Labour’s big announcement of the day ahead of that mission speech is a plan for “graduate-led nurseries”, and potential integration of some nurseries into primaries.

Meanwhile deputy leader Angela Rayner will set the scene for it too with her own speech at the Local Government Association this afternoon, Politico reports, warning the cost-of-living squeeze is causing insecurity that is “the enemy of opportunity”. She’ll also promise first-term “genuine devolution”.

It feels unlikely Labour council chiefs attending will get a pledge to plug a council funding black hole new estimates suggest now totals £3 billion over the next two years, though. Also in local government news, Starmer led tributes yesterday to Wolverhampton council leader Ian Brookfield.

Over in union land, education unions are calling on the government to stop delaying publication of government advisers’ recommendations on pay. The NEU has planned teacher walkouts tomorrow and Friday. Aslef plans another week of walkouts from July 17th. The FBU warns unions have “no choice” but to launch a mass campaign of non-compliance with the Tories’ anti-strike, mininum service levels bill.

Tory by-election strategy and anti-boycott manoeuvring

In by-election news, Uxbridge and South Ruislip candidate Danny Beales claimed credit for saving a local police station, which should help his campaign – even if Labour mayor Sadiq Khan’s decision on it has raised eyebrows and prompted a Tory complaint.

Less positive for either Labour politician is the attention a legal challenge due today will get over Khan’s planned expansion of London’s increasingly controversial ultra-low emissions zone (ULEZ).

One Tory source says their by-election strategy is simple in a must-read primer on the campaign today in the i: “Talk about nothing but Ulez, drop Sadiq in whenever possible, don’t mention Boris.”

Elsewhere, Labour want the Tories investigated to see if donations and private jet travel for the prime minister complied with funding rules, and separately the FT reports Labour hopes to “eliminate use of abusive lawsuits by oligarchs’.

And finally, Labour’s planned amendment to the Tories’ controversial anti-boycott bill failed yesterday and 10 Labour MPs defied the party line to abstain on the bill itself by voting against it, but many Tory MPs rebelled too.

And far from solely dividing Labour, it actually united Labour politicians from Margaret Hodge (watch her take-down here) to Dawn Butler in condemnation of the bill.

Barrister George Peretz has a handy primer for LabourList of all that’s wrong with the bill and how it backfired here.

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