Operation Here We Go Again: How Labour Is Already Preparing For The Next Election

The next general election campaign is already underway. At least it is in Labour party HQ, Tali Fraser reports, where MPs were told they should be continuing to campaign from the first day of being elected

Operation Here We Go Again. That is the working title for Labour’s campaigning machinery grinding its gears again as the party already starts working towards the next election. Or to go by its alternative name: Operation Don’t Screw It Up.

As Conservative headquarters is forced to make cuts and redundancies, the Labour Party has been focused from day one of its government on how HQ campaigning and a fresh set of new MPs can secure a second term in government. A summer incumbency campaign guide sent by the party to Labour MPs began: “We are clear, our re-election campaign has begun, and the hard work starts now.”

Although the party spent much of its resources over the election, with increased funding secured by Rachael McCaffrey and Labour peer Lord Alli, it has managed to streamline its organisational structure and retain groups of those hired by the party on temporary election contracts as full-time employees.

Campaigning veteran Hollie Ridley, the party’s new general secretary who has been with Labour for around 14 years, is beginning the work on the second chapter of Labour’s latest election tale. Head of field campaigns during the election, she immediately took on some of the former responsibilities of head of political strategy Morgan McSweeney upon his entry into No 10.

Now with the entire party under her remit, her ambition – alongside Marianna McFadden, the election campaign’s deputy director and wife of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Pat McFadden – is working out how to create their own incumbency factor