Keir Starmer has a people problem
It was an evening to remember, a fundraiser at London’s Grosvenor Park Hotel to fight glioblastoma, the brain cancer that killed the former Labour general secretary Margaret McDonagh, the cabinet minister Tessa Jowell and many more. At the tensest moment in recent Labour history, it brought together in one room most of the cabinet, Keir Starmer, Wes Streeting and much of old Team Blair. Table by table, the Labour factions eyed one another.
Everyone, I must report with some disappointment, behaved well. Streeting – fluent, self-confident, looking his critics in the eye – gave the main speech, which was about cancer. Starmer moved through the room, relaxed and cracking jokes at his own expense. Everywhere, people were discussing the near inevitability of a leadership change. But being in a place where the heroes were the neurologists and their patients – not politicians – kept people in check.
There is a conundrum about the Prime Minister. He’s told loyal cabinet ministers he will certainly fight, and he was in good spirits, yet he seems to lack the basic people skills for survival. I know of two senior people fired recently, both of whom were abruptly sacked by phone and, humiliatingly, not by Starmer. In one case, the person asked whether they could speak to the PM and was told: “That’s not an option.” It is this kind of treatment that has caused so many senior Labour people to become hostile. Starmer has said and done some good things in the past fortnight, but, honestly, this feels over already.
Badenoch recovers her conservatism
Meanwhile, even her opponents in the Conservative Party feel that Kemi Badenoch is doing better. Her “I don’t want to hear about Black Lives Matter, I don’t want to hear about ‘white lives matter’, everybody matters” response to Henry Nowak’s murder is seen as mainstream conservatism, an important dividing line with Reform. I’m told she’s reaching out to previous Tory leaders, particularly David Cameron – a change credited to her new parliamentary private secretary, the Salisbury MP John Glen, who has been described to me as the most influential Tory you’ve never heard of.
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Painting Bermondsey red
The national mood remains bleak. Apparently nothing has got better. Across Britain, we’re told, everywhere is going downhill. Well, it isn’t true. Bermondsey, where I’ll be lounging this summer, is better than ever. Once a centre of London’s leather industry, it is now a food and art paradise.
Charles Dickens would have been amazed and delighted to discover what’s happened to an area he described in Oliver Twist as “dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations, every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot and garbage”.
It’s different now. I have been smearing walls there with my drawings and paintings – my real passion, when not burbling on about politics. Each year, I have a summer show at Eames Fine Art, and this year it’s particularly scary because I am sharing the space with a great hero, Gillian Ayres. Sometimes you come across art that speaks so directly you never quite recover. Gillian, Britain’s best abstract artist, and a charismatic, pioneering woman, had that effect on me. This year’s Eames show is either an act of self-humiliation or pure homage; maybe both. All readers are welcome.
Wisdom in intelligence
There have been many tributes to Alex Younger, the former boss of MI6, who sadly died earlier this month. They’ve included funny stories and lavish praise but they haven’t quite got his remarkable character. He was a neighbour and was becoming a friend. He seemed to look right into you – as you’d hope a spy might – but with humour, scepticism and wisdom.
A scion of the Scottish brewing dynasty, Alex affably deflected inappropriate questions, including about 007-ish life-or-death choices. But another local resident, who had also served in the dark, now in her eighties, was less restrained. Approached by a would-be mugger, she told him: “Young man, you need to know that I could kill you with my little finger.” She wiggled it at him. He thought for a moment. And then he scarpered.
Alto, contralto, castrato
Meanwhile, I went to the Longborough Festival Opera to hear Handel’s Orlando, a huge hit in 1730s, but then, like so many early operas, forgotten about for a couple of centuries. It contains heartbreakingly lovely music, the eponymous hero sung by a fast-rising star, Beth Taylor. Why a woman? Because Handel wrote the part for Francesco Bernardi, the Italian contralto who was castrated aged 13. I wonder what Handel would make of our modern gender politics?
[Further reading: Meet Andy Burnham’s northern queens]
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