We are planning for 2029 election and will fight like 'insurgents' - McSweeney

Labour has already begun preparing for a 2029 election campaign, with the No 10 strategist Morgan McSweeney telling associates he wants to build a new coalition of voters and "fight it like an insurgent" party.

- Rowena Mason

Keir Starmer has been prime minister for only a week, with a slick start to his first days in government, but his team has even now started putting in place the structures to try to win a second term.

This includes McSweeney being charged with thinking about political choices that will secure a second term, and former MP Jonathan Ashworth being made leader of the Labour Together thinktank, in a "highly, highly political" appointment.

In a fireside chat this week with David Axelrod, the US star strategist for Barack Obama, McSweeney told those attending that his job now is to "think about the 2029 election".

He also told them that the party does not have to start with its current coalition of voters and will start again building the support it will need to win based on the likely electoral picture. His main argument was that the winning party "always has to fight an election like an insurgent".

McSweeney will be involved in day-to-day political strategy as well as longer-term planning. His efforts will be bolstered by Ashworth's appointment to Labour Together, an organisation previously run by McSweeney and funded by party donors. Ashworth, who lost his Leicester South seat to an anti-Gaza war independent candidate, said his role would partly be looking ahead to the next four to five years.

"The campaign to win the next general election has started," Ashworth said. "I know this from my time as a special adviser in government, that being in government is really, really busy and relentless.