Labour offers £1,000 bonus to hundreds of campaign staff

Labour has offered hundreds of campaign staff a £1,000 bonus, with excitement building in the party as it inches closer to power after 14 years in opposition.

With Sir Keir Starmer’s party still far ahead in the polls, officials are allowing themselves to feel excited about grasping the reins of power, even as top party strategists plead against complacency in the final two weeks.

“The mood is really good,” said shadow health secretary Wes Streeting, as he was wrapping up after the leaders’ Question Time session in York late on Thursday evening.

The candidate for Ilford North said he had been “absolutely shattered” over the weekend on a long train journey when Starmer gave him a pep talk: “Come on, we’ve only got two weeks left, we’ve got this.”

“I’m taking my energy from Keir at the moment,” he said. “It’s knots in the stomach, we’re trying not to take anything for granted.”

Labour apparatchiks describe a feeling of exhausted excitement at the end of the fourth week of campaigning.

Buoyant aides have been sharing memes and social media posts as the Tory campaign collapsed into “freefall” this week following news three Tory staffers and parliamentary candidates are being investigated as part of a probe into bets placed on the date of the election.

Labour staffers — who have been offered a one-off flat-rate bonus of £1,000 to be paid at the end of the six-week campaign — had expected a ruthless Tory operation to start eating into their poll lead from the first day.

Instead, the Conservatives have tripped over multiple gaffes from the moment the election was called by Rishi Sunak in the pouring rain, while a deluge of MRP polls released during the campaign predict near-wipeout scenarios for the Tories.

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At Labour’s headquarters in Southwark — where a couple of hundred staff are working long hours, six days a week — there is a “buzz” in the air. Pat McFadden and Morgan McSweeney are at the centre of the operation but personnel come and go on any given day.

Labour aides describe campaigns director McSweeney as being “in charge until the night of the election” at which point Sue Gray, chief of staff, will formally take charge of the machine.

One shadow cabinet minister described a feeling of “self belief I’ve not felt since I was elected as an MP”.

“Think about how long we’ve been waiting for this,” said another shadow cabinet minister. “Adrenaline is a great thing,” they added, referring to the seven days they were spending on the campaign trail each week.

Still, many are haunted by memories of past hubris. “I’m traumatised by 1992,” said one staffer who has worked for the party on and off for more than 20 years, referring to the general election when the Tories took power for the fourth consecutive time in spite of widespread confidence about a Labour victory.

Senior campaign figures have sought to douse optimism about the polling lead after a trio of major MRP polls released this week pointed to a staggering Labour victory, with the most outlandish suggesting Starmer could win a colossal 382-seat majority in a rout so comprehensive that Sunak would lose his safe Yorkshire seat.

McSweeney is repeatedly warning staff that they should not take the polls at face value, a theme that he has maintained for the past few years. “Oh my God he says it a lot,” said one staffer.

The campaign’s guru studied a recent MRP poll showing a large majority for Labour, and found that a small change in votes in 100 seats would be the difference between a hung parliament and a landslide.

His relentless, sober messaging is beginning to trickle down the party.

“The worry is that people conclude that the election is over, the result is already in the bag, and don’t bother voting for change,” said one senior aide, who argued the polls were being seized on by rightwing politicians and media outlets to try to dissuade prospective Labour voters. “It’s keeping me up at night,” they said.

The person noted pollsters made serious errors in 2015, 2017 and during the Brexit referendum, leading to stern recriminations that polls should not shape coverage as much as they did.

One Labour candidate said the Tory message about the danger of a Labour “supermajority” was already coming up on the doorstep.

“Some people are saying they don’t want a supermajority, and so they won’t be voting at all,” she said. “I spoke to someone just this morning saying, ‘I’ve changed my mind, I don’t want Labour having so many seats’.”

Meanwhile, insiders note Labour’s “restrained” manifesto is playing well with former Tory voters, but not with left-wingers.

“What I try to say to them is that if you move into a new house you don’t do up the bedrooms immediately, you have to fix the broken windows and put new locks on the door,” the candidate said. “You have to sort out the immediate problems before you turn your mind to the Laura Ashley wallpaper upstairs.”

This article has been amended to clarify a reference to a recent MRP poll suggesting that a small change in votes would be the difference between a hung parliament and a Labour landslide. A previous reference to the specific poll was incorrect.