Starmer’s team coached for government over dinners with top Whitehall figures

Shadow ministers step up preparations by holding informal meals to pick the brains of senior political figures

Senior members of Keir Starmer’s shadow cabinet have been meeting with top Whitehall mandarins and former cabinet ministers as part of the party’s growing preparations for government, the Observer has learned.

Patrick Vallance, the former chief scientific adviser who helped guide the government through the pandemic, as well as former New Labour cabinet ministers James Purnell and Patricia Hewitt, are among those to have attended a series of informal dinners designed to brief Labour frontbenchers on life in government. Former Blair-era adviser Sarah Hunter has also attended.