Labour cannot win the next election by default and must “earn” its victory, the party’s national campaigns chief has said.
Shabana Mahmood said it was not enough for Labour to rely on the “clear contrast” that had opened up between her party and Liz Truss’s Conservatives, whom she accused of playing “casino economics with the nation’s finances”.
Mahmood said her party must “persuade” people to “put their faith and their trust in us again”, adding: “We’re going to earn it house by house, street by street, all over the country”.
Her comments, in an exclusive interview with HuffPost UK from the Labour Party conference in Liverpool, came as YouGov gave Labour a 17-point opinion poll lead over the Conservatives.
But Mahmood insisted her party still had a “mountain” to climb to overturn the 80-seat majority the Tories won at the last election.
That would require the party to achieve an even bigger swing than Tony Blair managed in New Labour’s 1997 election landslide.
“On one level, it’s shocking now we’re back in the game,” Mahmood said.
“People are looking at us as a credible opposition and a credible government in waiting.
“If you’d said to me in 2019, ‘Shabana this is where you’re going to be at Labour conference in 2022’ I would not have believed you.
“We were supposed to be dead for generations.”
She added: “This is a good corrective for all of us to remember this is not easy, and it’s not going to come easy. It’s not going come by default. We’ve got to earn it. It’s going to be a long, hard road.”
Mahmood also left the door open to potential further tax rises under a Labour government.
She said the party would set out its “full plans” on the economy closer to the election but said on principle it believed in “fair taxation”.
Tax is likely to be one of the defining issues of the next election after Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, committed to scrapping the 45p rate of tax for the country’s top earners.
The move dominated the budget and led to accusations that the government was prioritising tax cuts for the well-off while the rest of the country struggles with the cost of living crisis.
It has also prompted questions about Labour’s position on tax after divisions emerged over whether the party supports Kwarteng’s plan to cut the basic rate of income tax to 19p.
Labour leader Keir Starmer has already pledged to reinstate the top rate of tax if he enters Downing Street, but has said he agrees with the plan to reduce the basic rate.
His endorsement came despite his deputy, Angela Rayner, saying cutting the basic rate was the “wrong priority”.
Asked whether voters should be prepared for Labour to raise some taxes, Mahmood replied: “I’m not going to get drawn into the detail of our tax plans outside of a general election, but what I can promise people is ...every single proposal we’ve made has been fully costed.
“We’ve said where the money is going to come from. We do believe in fairer taxation. If the change on the top rate of tax passes parliament, we will reverse it and will set out more of what we’re going to do.
“As a broad principle, I think that the burden should fall on those with more of the ability to bear that burden.”
She added: “I’d like to see a fairer spread of that burden of taxation. Public services do have to be paid for, but I wouldn’t want to put more pressure on working people so you’re looking at other sources of taxation.”
Labour’s focus in the general election campaign would be on the cost of living crisis as well as “the long term future”, including tackling climate change, Mahmood said.
“People want to have a sense that the country’s going to go in a positive direction,” she said.
“They’re looking for something that looks and feels like a tangible plan for the future, but that’s going to have resonance in their lives.
“And I think that with our policy offers on our climate investment pledge, and other priorities that Keir will be setting out in the speech on Tuesday, we will be able to show the voters that we are on their side, we have a plan for Britain.
“It’s a plan that they have a stake in that will make their lives better and will make us richer as a country.”
She reflected on the change Labour had been through since Starmer took over from Jeremy Corbyn in the aftermath of the 2019 general election defeat, when the party was reduced to 202 seats.
“We’ve completely changed the way that the party works,” she said.
“Everything we do has voters at its heart and talking to voters is our core business. We’ve already had two million conversations with voters in this last year — that’s the most out of any year outside of a general election since records began.”
She praised Starmer as a “great leader” who had done “most of the heavy-lifting on getting us back in the game”.
She also defended the Labour leader over his stance on the party’s support for striking workers, an issue that threatens to overshadow the relative unity that has been enjoyed at conference in contrast to previous years.
Starmer has told members of the frontbench not to attend the picket lines of striking workers as industrial began in the summer.
He sacked Sam Tarry, then a shadow minister, after he appeared on a picket line in Euston and said Labour should back pay rises in-line with inflation.
Tarry’s sacking earned Labour criticism from the trade union movement. Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, accused the party of “sticking two fingers up” at working people in its response to strike action.
At the weekend, she urged Starmer to be “bold” and said he should not feel “embarrassed to be on our picket lines with our members”.
But Mahmood said Starmer was right to tell members of the frontbench not to join picket lines — although she said it was “completely appropriate for people to want to show solidarity with workers in their constituencies”.
“We want to be in Downing Street, we want to be running the government, right? We want to be the key negotiators for fair pay deals for workers — you can’t go from a picket line and then run to the negotiating table.”
Asked whether Labour was “embarrassed” to show support with workers, Mahmood replied: “I’ve got a lot of respect for everybody in the trade union movement, but if you just make the test only whether you’re on picket lines with workers, that is a reductive way to look at what support for workers is all about.
“Support for workers is the ability to make decisions on our budget and the laws of our country that are in the interests of workers. And you can only do that if you’re in Downing Street as the prime minister and you’re running a government.”