How to reset your government

With a very busy autumn of politics just around the corner, many in the government are looking at the polls and wondering how they turn their fortunes around. This week, host Patrick Baker explores how Labour might use the coming months to try and reset the narrative. Speaking for the first time since he left Number 10, Ravinder Atwhal, Labour’s former head of policy and author of its election-winning manifesto, takes us inside the government’s difficult first year of power and explains what he thinks Keir Starmer needs to do to get back on track. With the autumn bringing plenty of reset opportunities, Scotland Office minister and Gordon Brown’s former speechwriter Kirsty McNeill reveals the secret to a barnstorming conference speech and offers her advice to the PM about how to make a success of his own Labour conference address in Liverpool. Poppy Trowbridge, former Treasury comms director under Theresa May and someone with no shortage of experience working on tricky budgets, offers her advice to Chancellor Rachel Reeves on how to turn this autumn’s big fiscal event into a political success (spoiler: it might not be possible). And former government chief whip under Rishi Sunak, Simon Hart, lifts the lid on the art of the government reshuffle and sets out why, in his view, they rarely provide the reset moment governments hope they might. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices