Campaign chief warns NEC May election still likely – and GE resources finite

Reports suggest Labour’s campaign director Morgan McSweeney told the party’s national executive committee meeting this week that Tory chaos may force Rishi Sunak to call an election for as early as May 2nd to pre-empt a threat to his leadership.

The senior party figure is said to have warned against under-estimating the level of “chaos” inside the Tories, with Sunak not necessarily in control of events.

He reportedly said that polls can move quickly, and the Tories have not given up – they are pumping resources into defensive marginals and will seek to make the election a referendum on Labour, not their record.

Evidence for the May poll includes the timing of the March Budget, Tories’ digital spending patterns and sped-up National Insurance cuts.

Yet Rishi Sunak has publicly said his “working assumption” is an autumn election, and many pundits argue there is little reason why he would go to the country with the Tories trailing in the polls.

McSweeney also apparently warned both the Kingswood and Wellingborough by-elections look challenging. He set out Labour’s new central four-part messaging, as first revealed by LabourList earlier this month – that it is time for change, the Tories have failed, Starmer has changed Labour, and Labour has a long-term plan to change the country.

The NEC was reportedly told too that Labour needs so many seats for a working majority, it cannot put the same resources into all of them given finite and capped campaign cash, with targeting a zero-sum game, and data and intelligence informing where resources go.

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Labour has a 34 point lead over the Conservatives in 150 key target seats, per exclusive @thefabians analysis

This is 10 points higher than the national average 👀

GB
🌹LAB 46%
🌳CON 22%

TARGET SEATS
🌹LAB 52%
🌳CON 18%

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NEC members are said to have been told too by other speakers that the party now has 100 trainee organisers and digital specialists, helping battleground candidates shoot better videos, and field organisers to create more content themselves.

It comes as new research by the Fabian Society and YouGov suggests Labour has a 34 percentage point lead in 150 of the key seats it needs to win to gain a healthy majority – 10pp higher than its national lead. Just one in five voters said they would vote Tory, though about the same were undecided.

Report author Ben Cooper warned “the significant portion of ‘don’t know’ voters and levels of support for Reform show there is still a lot of work to do”. While Labour lead on tackling the cost of living too, almost half were unsure or said there was little difference between the parties.

Labour was approached for comment.