Keir Starmer and the Beat-Sweeteners

With a new Government comes new opportunities for political journalists to ingratiate themselves with the new regime

No-one is listening to the Conservative party any more. That’s the unavoidable conclusion they should draw from their first week in opposition.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the response to the unofficial start of the Conservative party leadership contest.

This less than gripping contest has so far involved front page leaks, speeches at a central London conference and a public slanging match between several of its leading contenders.

Yet aside from a handful of Twitter spats and radio phone-ins, almost nobody seems to care.

This is particularly the case among the ranks of Westminster’s political journalists, who have instead spent most of their week getting to grips with the Conservatives’ successors.

Inside Parliament’s cafes and bars, battalions of new Labour MPs and ministers have found themselves greeted by lines of journalists eager to get them on first name terms.

Meanwhile over in Washington, hardened hacks who used to grill Rishi Sunak about disastrous polls and existential Cabinet splits, have instead challenged his successor with such hard-hitting questions as “How have your meetings with world leaders gone today Prime Minister?” and “are you looking forward to your visit to the White House later?”

Yet as correspondents battle to ‘sweeten their beat’ for the new regime, could they be missing a real wave of trouble about to hit Keir Starmer and his party?