When political leaders and their aides decamp from parliament to their party HQs for the duration of the election campaign, the atmosphere is usually one of homecoming.

For Jeremy Corbyn, the mood is somewhat different. Southside, Labour’s unflashy office on Victoria Street, Westminster, is seen by the tight team of aides around the leader and his wingman John McDonnell as a source of intrigue and sabotage. So sceptical are they about the backing of their now deskmates that they have given Southside an ominous nickname: “the dark side”.

Corbyn may have won the party’s leadership handsomely twice over, but insiders say that the leader of the opposition’s office – or “Loto”, as it is known in party parlance – has never really lost a sense of siege. They would add that there is some justification for that. Matt Zarb-Cousin, who recently stepped down as Corbyn’s spokesman, told the US magazine Jacobin this week – just as the election campaign cranks into gear – that Labour party staff habitually handed sensitive information to the press to destabilise the leadership.

“There were endless leaks from Southside, which makes it incredibly difficult to function in a professional way,” he said. “I don’t think anyone would be able to under those conditions.”

Whatever staffers in Labour’s HQ, many of whom are not natural Corbyn supporters, and Loto may think of each other, for the next 40 days they will be sharing more than an office – they will be working “flat out, together”, as Corbyn said when he addressed a packed room of party workers on the eighth floor last Friday.

In a nod to the gruelling six weeks they all face, as well as geeing them up for the fight against injustice and poverty, he urged staff not to be afraid to confide in one another when they feel under stress.

And Corbyn sought to steady nerves by reassuring the party’s troops, many of whom privately believe they are facing the electoral equivalent of the charge of the Light Brigade, that the mood on the streets when he attends campaign events is very different to that “in the TV studios”, perhaps a reference to last week’s grilling on national security by Andrew Marr.

Insiders say Loto staff have brought with them a baffling number of volunteers, and staff on short-term contracts, whose roles and responsibilities are unclear. But as Corbyn seeks to inspire his staff in the next six weeks, most senior party figures believe that one adviser will influence him above all others: Seumas Milne.

Seumas Milne acts as political strategist, media spokesman and sounding board for the Labour leader. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Milne, a former Guardian columnist, acts as political strategist, media spokesman and sounding board for the Labour leader. He fiercely rejects much of the legacy of the Blair/Brown years, and has encouraged Corbyn to make a virtue of some of his less-than-mainstream views, on issues such as nuclear disarmament.

Unlike many Labour MPs, who are downbeat at the scale of the challenge they face, Corbyn’s campaign team seem optimistic. Denton MP Andrew Gwynne is the relentlessly cheerful campaigns coordinator, sharing the role with veteran Corbyn ally Ian Lavery.

One reason Corbyn’s inner circle appear chipper despite the polls pointing to a heavy defeat is that they believe they have a slate of populist policies, carefully tested through polling, ready to unleash on the public.



They were encouraged by the positive response to their free school meals plan, which was released over Easter, partly because the party was trying to position itself for an early poll. Milne has been predicting a spring election for months, and one senior staff member said Labour was “surprised, but not shocked” by Theresa May’s announcement.

They believe the strictly non-partisan nature of broadcasters’ election coverage will allow their policies – rather than infighting – to get an airing: aides have been particularly pleased that Labour’s headline pledges have popped up in the bitesize news summaries on music radio stations.

Drafts of different policies are already flying back and forth – and the party’s 500,000 members have been asked to chip in about what they think the priorities for a Labour manifesto should be. It is timetabled for launch on 15 May.

Shadow cabinet ministers’ power and prominence over the next month or so will depend on their personal profile, and closeness to Corbyn and McDonnell. Some, including Corbyn’s close allies Diane Abbott and of course McDonnell himself, have been given considerable leeway to determine policy in their area – though Corbyn had to defend Abbott after a shaky radio performance on Tuesday morning.

But the shadow cabinet as a whole has not been a collective decision-making body for some time, partly because Corbyn and his allies don’t trust all of its members. One shadow minister described a recent meeting as “like the politburo in Pyongyang”, adding that decisions were clearly made elsewhere.

As the campaign gets under way in earnest, the day will start with a 7am meeting at Southside, with some participants calling in from home, in which the team will have a postmortem of the previous day’s media coverage, and plan the day ahead.

A grid, ultimately overseen by Milne and his deputy, Steve Howell, has now been provisionally filled out for the next five weeks with campaign events. Another meeting, at 5pm, will try to ensure Labour is on top of running stories and look ahead to the next day.

There is to be no “rapid rebuttal unit”, like the one pioneered by Labour in 1997; and indeed Corbyn told staff that when it came to personal attacks, such as Boris Johnson’s dismissal of him as a “mutton-headed mugwump”, he would not respond in kind, but instead simply refuse to be dragged into the gutter.



The Tory campaign has homed in on Theresa May’s qualities as a leader – strong, decisive, determined – precisely because they believe voters see Corbyn as exactly the opposite. But Labour strategists believe the more the public see of Corbyn during the campaign, the more they will appreciate his authenticity. What the Tories describe as dither, they hope will come across as thoughtfulness and authenticity.

But they plan to be ready to move quickly when necessary. Corbyn’s allies believe Ed Milband was too slow in 2015 to rule out categorically a coalition deal with Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP – a hesitation they believe was ultimately extremely costly. So twice already, when Corbyn has appeared to equivocate publicly – on a second referendum, and on Trident renewal – the party has swiftly clarified its position.

Jeremy Corbyn campaigns in Southampton. Photograph: Peter Nicholls/Reuters

A small team of senior MPs regarded as strong all-round media performers will be on standby to be sent out on the attack on the radio and TV at short notice. It is likely to include Jon Trickett, backbencher Lucy Powell – not usually regarded as a Corbyn fan – the shadow trade and energy secretary, Barry Gardiner, and the shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgon.

But ultimately, Labour’s strategy has Corbyn front and centre, as this weekend’s speech about his life and personal story underlined. He will seek to translate the fervent rallies of his leadership campaign to a national stage, far beyond the half a million members of his own party; and channel the punchy, outsiderish appeal of Bernie Sanders, the leftwing candidate for the Democratic nomination for the US presidency.

In the end, of course, Sanders couldn’t convince even the backers of his own party that he could win, and his electability was never put to the ultimate test. Team Corbyn reacted with fury during last year’s leadership race to Owen Smith’s suggestion that whatever his other admirable qualities, Corbyn was unelectable. They have fewer than six weeks to prove otherwise.

Team Corbyn

Seumas Milne: executive director of strategy and communications, Milne is the Alastair Campbell to Corbyn’s Tony Blair – both public spokesman and private consigliere. Caffeine-fuelled and sardonic, Milne was a Guardian journalist for many years before becoming one of the key figures in Corbyn’s team.



Steve Howell: Milne’s deputy, brought in recently from the PR firm Freshwater, which he founded in 1997. Less aloof and more vocal in meetings than Milne, it was Howell who laid out Labour’s election strategy to the party’s ruling national executive committee. Insiders say the old schoolfriend of Peter Mandelson, and former communist, is making his presence felt.

Andrew Fisher: executive policy director. Fisher is one of the key figures behind Labour’s manifesto. He worked at the PCS, the public sector union, and wrote an anti-privatisation polemic, The Failed Experiment, before being hired by Corbyn. Some who have observed the pair together describe their relationship as being like father and son.

Karie Murphy: a close ally of Unite’s general secretary, Len McCluskey, Murphy runs Corbyn’s office, acting as a powerful gatekeeper to the Labour leader. Jon Trickett’s ousting as campaigns coordinator resulted partly from a bad-tempered spat with Murphy; and she has been closely involved in coordinating recent reshuffles.

Andrew Gwynne: the MP for Denton and Reddish, the area where he grew up, Gwynne is Labour’s joint national campaigns coordinator. A former parliamentary private secretary to Ed Balls when he was education secretary, Gwynne is well-liked by shadow cabinet colleagues.

Ian Lavery: Gwynne’s fellow campaigns chief. A firebrand former mineworker with close links to the leftwing trade unions – including the National Union of Mineworkers, of which he was president – Lavery has been in the Commons since 2010, and was brought into the shadow cabinet by Corbyn.