Parliament returned after an unsettled August as ministers regrouped from a difficult recess. Nigel Farage encouraged protests over asylum seeker accommodation and benefited from slow news days. Polling now places immigration above the economy as the dominant voter concern, giving Reform UK a focused campaign terrain. The government announced a crackdown on refugees bringing families as its first move back. Labour recruited Minouche Shafik and Darren Jones to strengthen economic policymaking ahead of an autumn budget. The upcoming budget represents a crucial opportunity for Labour to shift from defence to offence amid multiple structural national challenges.
He was rewarded by polling showing voters now see immigration the terrain on which Reform UK is palpably desperate to fight an election, because it's terrain on which Labour can never go far enough to please some supporters without horrifying half the rest and not a broken economy as Britain's biggest problem, an impression arguably only reinforced when the government's first announcement on returning from recess was a crackdown on refugees bringing their families to Britain.
Having hired the former deputy governor of the Bank of England Minouche Shafik to advise him, Starmer has also now poached Rachel Reeves's restless deputy Darren Jones to work for him on delivery. Both moves come ahead of an autumn budget marking what may be Labour's last real chance to get out of its defensive crouch and move on to the attack.
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