Keir Starmer’s real problem
Labour MPs are excoriating Keir Starmer and asking how much longer he can survive. Others are calling for the sacking of Morgan McSweeney, the man often deemed more influential than the Prime Minister. Angela Rayner, meanwhile, has once more forced No 10 to swerve away from a brick wall. If this all feels familiar, that’s because it is.
In many ways the Mandelson scandal belongs in a category of its own – a surreal affair that now spans UK asset sales, bankers’ bonuses, coalition negotiations and Russian visas. Starmer’s admission at yesterday’s PMQs that he was aware Mandelson’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein continued has left him unavoidably exposed.
Public opposition to Starmer now extends beyond those No 10 could dismiss as the usual suspects. “The issue is the leadership from the Prime Minister,” John Hutton, the Blair-era cabinet minister, told Andrew Marr yesterday, declaring that “this government is in serious trouble, and someone needs to rescue it from the malaise it’s in”.
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That’s a line that could have been delivered at any point over the last six months, and here’s the great problem for Starmer: the Mandelson scandal is part of a pattern, not an anomaly. Take the events that have been most damaging to the Prime Minister’s leadership – the winter fuel payment cuts, the “island of strangers” speech, the welfare bill, Mandelson’s appointment – and common trends emerge. A lack of due diligence, little consideration of party opinion, the erosion of Starmer’s natural political brand and inevitable defeat. The Mandelson scandal would be dangerous for any leader, but the reason it is potentially fatal for Starmer is because of all that has preceded it.
For now, the Prime Minister is kept in place by an overlooked factor: the lack of an agreed successor. Labour’s soft left has no intention of allowing a coronation for Wes Streeting – a scenario once discussed by MPs – but Andy Burnham lacks a seat, Ed Miliband lost the 2015 election and Rayner must first wait for an HMRC investigation into her tax affairs to conclude. “At some point the PLP will have to decide whether Keir’s so toxic that he has to go even without an obvious successor,” ripostes a previously loyal minister. For Starmer, now estranged from so many of his past supporters, the danger is that such thinking proves contagious.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[Further reading: Labour MPs are turning on Starmer over the Mandelson scandal]
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