Isabel Hardman

What does the Labour party stand for? That's the big question that Keir Starmer needs to answer this week, and so far it's proving rather more difficult to answer than you might imagine. Its frontbenchers are mostly working on policies that won't be announced this week, so they are resorting to talking about the party's heritage and listing the increasing number of elections the party has lost. A line that I've heard from a number of shadow ministers on the fringe over the past few days is 'we need to learn from the losses of 2010, 2015, 2017 and 2019'. I've heard rather fewer assertions about winning the next election, though. And where there are announcements they seem entirely random rather than part of a wider attempt to tell voters what kind of party Labour is under Starmer.

Keir Starmer this evening managed to scrape through his reforms to how Labour elects its leader. The victory follows a very passionate debate at the party's conference over the policy, which will raise the qualifying threshold of support from MPs in leadership elections from 10 per cent to 20 per cent. It also drops registered supporters, who could join by paying just £3, from being able to vote in leadership elections and introduces a cut-off date for membership when a contest begins. The idea is that when there is a new leadership contest after Starmer, Labour won’t end up electing a fringe candidate. In other words, it is designed to stop another Jeremy Corbyn.

Keir Starmer is a keen amateur footballer. It’s one of the few facts anyone knows about the Labour leader. He enjoys a game on his spare time, and on the campaign trail too. One person who played with him recently told me: ‘You can tell he plays a lot and takes it very seriously.’ What they couldn’t say was that he was very good at it. Starmer is currently trying to play a political game by changing the rules for Labour’s leadership elections. It’s a big and serious move as it would make it harder for the party to go left when it picks his successor. It is therefore a confrontation with the left that some in his camp see as Starmer’s Kinnock moment (more on this from Katy in this week’s magazine).

Keir Starmer’s long-awaited and lengthy essay on what he thinks the Labour party should be doing and saying has finally landed. It’s part of the Labour leader’s attempt to define himself this conference season, and sits alongside the noisy fight he’s picked with the left of the party and some of the trade unions over voting reform in leadership contests and policymaking. It’s just under 12,000 words, so it’s not an election pledge card or really aimed at voters at all. Perhaps that’s why it is largely painted in watercolour, rather than the primary colours Starmer will need to get the attention of the electorate.

Tory MPs will not get the chance to force the government into a U-turn on scrapping the £20-a-week Universal Credit uplift this afternoon after the Speaker didn't select their rebel amendment. Sir Iain Duncan Smith and Damian Green had tabled the motion refusing to give a second reading to the bill on the basis that the money saved by breaking the pensions triple lock should have been diverted towards keeping the uplift. The motion would not have reinstated the uplift, but would have blocked the legislation process enabling the government to suspend the triple lock so that the state pension rises in line with inflation or 2.5 per cent, rather than wages. This was an attempt to hold legislation to ransom, which speakers do not like.

After a rather quiet day, the reshuffle is back on, and Boris Johnson is proving to be even more brutal with the more junior ministerial jobs than he was in his clear out of the cabinet. So far, the following have left government: Jesse Norman Caroline Dinenage Luke Hall Graham Stuart James Duddridge Matt Warman John Whittingdale Nick Gibb And these are the moves and promotions within government:TreasuryLucy Frazer is financial secretary, moving from Justice. Helen Whately is exchequer secretary, moving from Health and Social Care. Home OfficeRachel Maclean has been made a parliamentary under sectary at the Home Office, having been moved from Transport. EducationRobin Walker is a minister of state, moving from Northern Ireland.

Tory MPs were not happy when Sajid Javid unveiled the Covid winter plan in the Commons this afternoon. They’re dissatisfied with the government holding so many powers – such as vaccine passports, further lockdowns and other restrictions – in reserve as part of its Plan B, which will be activated this winter if cases breach what the NHS can cope with. The Health Secretary explained Plan B thus: ‘It is absolutely right that the government have a contingency plan, and the trigger, so to speak, for plan B, as I mentioned in my statement, would be to look carefully at the pressures on the NHS.

As expected, this evening the Commons approved the 1.25 per cent increase in National Insurance, with 319 votes in favour and 248 against. The Tory rebellion was tiny – far smaller even than the predictions earlier today of 20 or so voting against. Just five MPs opposed the motion: John Redwood, Esther McVey, Christopher Chope, Philip Davies and Neil Hudson. There were rather more abstentions from rebels who had previously been outspoken in their opposition to the policy, for reasons I set out earlier.  Some MPs who didn’t vote, by the way, weren’t protesting: they just weren’t in Westminster because the government had sprung this vote on them at the last minute.