Life on Labour’s battle bus as travel-sick Starmer eyes even more seats

In his campaigning around the country over the past month, Sir Keir Starmer has had to cope with one major disadvantage: travel sickness.

The Labour leader has been on the road almost every day since Rishi Sunak called the election in May.

He tends to spend the morning doing campaign events with supporters, journalists and members of the public, before entering the bunker with his closest aides in the afternoon – planning strategy, recording clips for social media and liaising shadow Cabinet colleagues.

At the start of the campaign, the Conservatives claimed Sir Keir was looking “weary” in an attempt to highlight the 18-year age gap between him and Rishi Sunak. But he has seldom spent a whole day away from the trail – a Labour frontbencher insisted: “Keir has amazing stamina, he basically hasn’t slept as far as I can tell.”

His most troubling physical ailment, which he revealed to reporters this week, is that he is not a fan of coaches – notwithstanding the luxurious outfitting of his “battle bus”, which has an espresso machine and large selection of snacks along with a notorious fridge of which Angela Rayner is particularly proud.

“I don’t do very well with road travel,” Sir Keir admitted. He said that during one interview with LBC’s Andrew Marr, he started to feel distinctly unwell and feared catastrophe.

But there is one great advantage of his breakneck tour of Britain, he added – seeing the beautiful countryside even in areas which get few tourists, like the Midlands counties.

The Leader of the Opposition has been encroaching ever more on traditionally Tory territory: one rally at a rural cricket club in Berkshire was so Conservative in its vibe that you almost expected David Cameron to be the guest speaker. That is a result of stubbornly stable polls which show Mr Sunak is failing to reduce the Labour lead, opening up ever more seats as potential Labour gains.

“Our strategy basically hasn’t changed,” one senior party figure heavily involved in the campaign told i. “If the polls had narrowed as most people probably expected, we might have had to reconsider a bit. But that hasn’t really happened, and if anything a few more seats have opened up that we wouldn’t have thought we could win.”

Starmer has had to contend with travel sickness during his time on the campaign trail (Photo: PA)

One signature of the campaign has remained visits to lower league football grounds, which a party insider said were always an “instantly recognisable” symbol of their town, allowing for better coverage in the local media.

Much of his campaigning activity is highly stage-managed – every time he gets on or off the bus, a group of activists who have been standing around for half an hour or more whoop and cheer for the cameras for just 20 seconds or so.

But he says he is intent on using the events, however choreographed, to help him formulate thoughts about his next steps in the election campaign and his priorities for government. At a further education college in Burton-upon-Trent, he asked students to email him a question, comment, or “even a profound thought” so he knows what they care most about.

Asked by i why he had made that appeal, Sir Keir replied: “As soon as people look up, particularly young people, and see a bank of cameras they slightly freeze, and so trying to get them to talk is quite difficult. And then some of them do want to follow up, either in the margins or send some stuff through. You’d be surprised how useful the information is, what they are actually thinking of.”

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He also does a near-daily round of media engagement, taking questions from four or five broadcasters before talking to nearly a dozen different print and online outlets – useful access, though he does his best not to give away any policy details.

Senior Tories are growing ever more frustrated at Sir Keir’s success in dodging tough questions about his agenda for government. One ex-minister who is standing down at this election said: “We are a few days out from a general election and the very likely inbound Labour government are sailing into office with next to no scrutiny whatsoever. I am not saying this to trip them home, but because I want my government to have a mandate!”

Not everyone in Labour is convinced that the election result is as cut-and-tried as the polls suggest. “I’ve got that election anxiety in my stomach right now,” a shadow Cabinet minister moaned this week.

Sir Keir is leaving nothing to chance with his so-called “Ming vase” strategy – named after a description of Tony Blair in 1997 as “like a man carrying a priceless Ming vase across a highly polished floor”. Sir Tony’s successor said this week: “On the Ming vase, I’ve had no end of suggestions about having a bit of a juggle. But I’m not going to do it.”

Election 2024

Rishi Sunak, Sir Keir Starmer and other party leaders are on the campaign trail, and i‘s election live blog is the go-to place for everything on the general election.

Reform has been under fire after Andrew Parker, a canvasser, was caught using a racial slur about Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. Nigel Farage has expressed ‘dismay’ at this.

Meanwhile, i has compiled the main parties’ pledges on key issues – read our breakdown of NHS, education, and defence. You can also read each party’s key manifesto pledges in our party breakdowns of the Tories, Green Party, Labour, Liberal Democrats and Reform UK.