Where are we then, after the most consequential week in British politics since the last one?
Keir Starmer no longer commands a majority in the House of Commons on key issues he cares about, the basic requirement which gives prime ministers their constitutional legitimacy. That much became clear on Thursday when Angela Rayner and other Labour MPs sided with the Tories to insist that the Intelligence and Security Committee should decide – not the cabinet secretary – which documents on the decision to appoint Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the United States should be released.
So Labour has a working majority of 156 but Starmer no longer commands it. He is functionally finished as prime minister. Had two cabinet ministers gone public on Thursday evening to say that he should resign, it would surely have caused a cascade of departures. What finishes prime ministers is not votes of confidence but being unable to run a government and command the support of sufficient numbers of frontbenchers. Both Theresa May and Boris Johnson survived votes of no confidence among their MPs but were gone shortly afterwards. In Johnson’s case it took 52 resignations by ministers and parliamentary private secretaries to conclude that he was toast.
The Johnson–Starmer parallels are interesting, since they are very different people and loathed each other. But in trying to enforce a procedural nonsense on a party which could not stomach it, as Starmer did yesterday, he was merely repeating the errors of judgement which led Johnson to dragoon Tory MPs into supporting Owen Paterson, a senior Conservative who had been found bang to rights for paid lobbying. Johnson lasted another nine months but most of us who have written at length about his downfall concluded that this was when the hubris and the rot set in.
Starmer’s house is riddled with rot to its deepest foundations, but the Labour party has, for now, declined to kick it down. They have bottled it. Starmergeddon has been deferred. Part of the reason for this is that many MPs are only just catching up with the reality. The incandescent rage in the tea room and on the Commons terrace on Wednesday evening came because they were shocked to their boots by Starmer’s admission that he had known that some Mandelson links to Epstein continued after he was convicted, at the point that he gave him the job.
Anyone paying attention last September would have known this. Starmer was asked at a press conference in January 2024, by Jim Pickard of the Financial Times, what he thought of Mandelson staying in Epstein’s apartment when he was in jail. It is a feature of Westminster that journalists are often accused of obsessively following issues deep into the weeds, but many MPs barely follow the details of these things. They see and hear what they want to hear and move as a herd – as Nadhim Zahawi pointed out to Boris Johnson as the end neared.
And yet the herd has not moved. At the time of writing, very few mainstream Labour MPs have demanded Starmer’s resignation. Jock McConnell, the former first minister of Scotland, called time on the prime minister this morning, calling for a ‘total reset’ at the top and urging cabinet ministers to plunge the knife, but he is a rare exception.
There seems a near-overwhelming view that Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff, should resign, but even implacable foes of Starmer are reluctant to say so on the record. It is a moot point whether sacrificing McSweeney now would be enough to save Starmer’s skin. Indeed, I suspect it would simply remove the prime minister’s human shield. Starmer has instead offered McSweeney his support, saying he is the man who got Labour elected. It is an accurate assessment, but one which shows that, in his heart, Starmer understands that he himself was not the one who deserves the credit.
There is also the factor of what losing McSweeney – which he does not want to do – would represent. It would demonstrate that Starmer is a busted flush and no longer master of his own fate. McSweeney is the last raven in the Tower, whose departure would signal that the storming of the walls is imminent. As a senior Labour figure, who knows both men, put it: ‘I have never had any doubt that Keir will chuck Morgan overboard – precisely five minutes before the ship sinks and he walks the plank.’ Ravens, pirate ships – truly a political crisis ripe with mixed metaphors. Yes, people in Westminster really do talk like this.
McSweeney, a protégé of Mandelson, who guided him through the defenestration of the Labour left, pressed for Mandelson to become ambassador. And, as the book Get In, by Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire, demonstrates, he intervened on Mandelson’s behalf when it looked like Starmer was leaning towards appointing George Osborne.
I, like many others, thought this a risk worth taking, as Mandelson is a supreme political operator in his day job (as distinct from his personal affairs). Starmer should just boldly say that he thought it worth the risk and that he believed it unlikely to blow up in his face in Washington, since Trump was also friends with Epstein. Indeed, tensions with the Americans over the Mandelson appointment concerned his business dealings and attitude to China, rather than anything to do with Epstein.
I, like many others, thought this a risk worth taking, as Mandelson is a supreme political operator in his day job
What he did not know, because the emails were not at that point public, was that Mandelson was routinely leaking secret, market-sensitive information about the bailout and the taxing of bankers’ bonuses, as well as top-level gossip about Gordon Brown’s imminent departure, within minutes, to a man who had paid him $75,000 and also funnelled tens of thousands to his boyfriend – now husband – Reinaldo Avila da Silva. Starmer should perhaps have asked the Americans to search the cache of documents. It has also now emerged that Epstein sought to help him land millions of dollars of work after Mandelson left government.
But for Starmer to claim he knew nothing and that Mandelson lied is the height of cant. The prime minister was clearly shown pictures of Mandelson cavorting with Epstein when he had to decide whether to appoint him or not. There were plenty of warnings, from Lord Glasman and others, that he was a wrong ’un. But the Labour lefties now jumping on Peter’s grave had nearly as much information, and Starmer’s best defence should be to level with the public about why he thought it worth the risks. Pretending he was hoodwinked after a few cursory questions makes him look pathetic. As a former No. 10 special adviser observes: ‘If he used this approach when he was DPP, then you would certainly take your chances on a not-guilty plea.’
Tories watching all this have particularly enjoyed the role of Scotland Yard. Starmer’s fate, to a degree, is in ‘the lap of the plods’, as one SW1 wit puts it (as too is Mandelson’s, after they raided his properties today). The rozzers have blocked Starmer from releasing papers proving, he claims, that Mandelson lied to him about the extent of his relationship with Epstein at the point he was being vetted as a possible ambassador. They recall the pious glee of the Met, and the serial leaking from within its corridors, when probing the issue of bets made by Tory officials on the date of the general election, which helped derail Rishi Sunak’s election campaign. They remember, too, the endless to-ing and fro-ing between the Yard, Sue Gray and Johnson’s Downing Street over the Partygate scandal.
In Labour, which rejoiced in these probes and the rectitude – or bloody-mindedness – of the police, there is now only cynicism. ‘The police are reminding the government who is boss,’ says one grandee, ‘telling Keir they can’t help him because it might prejudice their investigation. You can prejudice a jury – I’m not sure how you prejudice the police. You can be sure that if Keir had said he wanted to keep all the documents secret, the police would immediately have seen their role as publishing everything as soon as possible.’
None of which much helps. The Labour party is hopeless at coups. Those of us who watched James Purnell resign on election night in 2009 in a bid to bring down Gordon Brown, or sat through the Hoon–Hewitt rebellion of January 2010 – either of which might have succeeded if David Miliband had joined in – have the need for caution when it comes to Labour culls seared into their souls.
So what happens now?
Wes Streeting seems to have the necessary 80 names to wield to challenge Starmer (though I would be hyper-cautious of reports claiming he has 200 MPs signed up), but has not yet sent anyone over the parapet, beyond bemoaning the Mandelson affair. He too has a Mandy issue, in that he has long been Mandelson’s preferred candidate and his partner, Joe Dancey, once worked for the man we must soon call the Commoner of Darkness. Some think Streeting is so unpopular with the soft left that his enemies will run a ‘Stop Wes’ candidate come what may.
Angela Rayner would be a formidable contender, but she still does not have a clean bill of health from the tax authorities and, while her plunging the knife this week seems a statement of intent, she would be better waiting until after May. There persist senior people I trust who tell me she has privately admitted – paraphrase klaxon – ‘I know I’m not up to it’. One former minister told me recently: ‘She is very limited. She has such narrow frames of reference. She brings everything back to her time in care homes, working for a union. She knows nothing of economics or the wider world.’
But she is determined and she has a good team, led by Nick Parrott, one of Westminster’s better backroom operators, who want her to run and win. She would have a lot of union support, she has authenticity and a personality, and would make Labour feel Labour again. I personally think she runs, but I put more weight on the views of those who think a market reaction to untrammelled taxing and spending would prevent her winning. Others think that, in a six-week contest, she would be found out. ‘She would have to say the fiscal rules stay,’ a former No. 10 aide said. ‘And if she does that, what is the point of a Rayner premiership?’ Rayner would say that having a plan and fighting with conviction, and repurposing the money within an envelope, would still be worthwhile – but she would have to tread carefully. One source close to her acknowledges: ‘She knows she would have to appoint a boring chancellor to calm the markets.’ The name of Douglas Alexander, the Scottish Secretary, has been floated in this context.
Outside of these two, there are four power brokers who matter.
The first, and least important but potentially the most symbolic, is Hilary Benn. The Northern Ireland Secretary is Labour royalty, a man of the soft left but what you might call high-church Labour. He is not one for factions or plots. He has moral authority. His speech defenestrating Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of the bombing of Syria was a moral and oratorical tour de force, a moment when a perennial mouse roared. It is one of the half-dozen best speeches I have ever heard in the Commons and it gives him clout, including with rivals across the floor. I was contacted last night by a civil servant whom I trust, who said Benn is ‘disgusted’ by the Mandelson affair and that, if he quit, it would be Keir today, gone tomorrow. Sources close to Benn say it is ‘total nonsense’ that he might resign, but the point remains true.
In the cabinet, two other people matter. Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary, is every Tory’s favourite Labour minister, since she seems the one most cognisant of the realities of the modern world – but these are the very reasons which make it unlikely she is ever leader. As the one person tackling something that matters to voters, someone who knows her mind and speaks it with passion and conviction, she is widely regarded as the most able cabinet member. If she makes clear that Starmer should go, he is finished. Both Streeting and Rayner would like her support, and making her chancellor would go a long way towards establishing credibility with the markets.
The other key swing vote is Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, whose net-zero crusade has made him a bête noire for the right but the most popular minister in the government with Labour members and voters. I know Ed a bit and I personally do not think he wants to put himself through the mill again as leader – the bacon-sandwiches and two-kitchens episodes burned him badly – and, bluntly, he was far less relaxed as leader. Unlike some politicians, he has a nice life and a sensible wife. ‘Justine would divorce him or kill him,’ one mutual friend observes.
Yet Miliband’s clout is considerable. Some think Starmer might make him chancellor – the one post which would interest him more than energy and from which he could pursue net zero with vim – after May, as a final throw of the dice. Others think that he is the supreme kingmaker in the party. His position would become more critical if Rayner decided not to run. ‘In those circumstances the soft left would insist that he runs and Ed would feel that he had to,’ says one grandee. Labour peers – a gaggle of lefties, some of whom used to work for him – are firmly behind Ed and dream of a Miliband restoration.
The other candidate who might be thrust into this limelight is Yvette Cooper, the Foreign Secretary, a minister who is regarded in Whitehall as uber-cautious and indecisive but who has not made any notable errors in the past 18 months. Polling suggests that Streeting would narrowly beat Miliband and Cooper in Labour’s electoral college, but that Rayner would beat Streeting comfortably if she gets her act together.
The only other potential candidate worth a mention is Al Carns, the armed forces minister, who used to command the SBS and is a proven leader – competent enough that even Dominic Cummings has sung his praises in public. If the new intake, the largest in the parliamentary Labour party, decided that all the above were useless, he would be an interesting standard-bearer for the 2024 crowd.
Then there are the former leaders. Gordon Brown, I understand, is incandescent about the Mandelson appointment and, despite reviving his career once before, has been calling Downing Street to scream at Starmer’s aides, having received proof of Mandy’s perfidy in the emails and having demanded an inquiry into whether Mandelson was leaking against him last September – a probe which turned up nothing.
Former leaders are usually wheeled out as the men in suits to pull down the curtain when the show cannot go on. Starmer has no time for Tony Blair, and Blair has long since given up on Starmer, so a combination of Brown and Miliband would have clout – perhaps along with the former stand-in leader Harriet Harman, who has been sharing her negative views of Mandelson and Starmer’s judgement widely on the broadcast media in the past 24 hours.
If I were having a bet, I would suspect that McSweeney will jump, or be sacrificed, after the by-election, and Starmer after 7 May, perhaps as he tries one final reshuffle purge, chucking Rachel Reeves overboard in a bid to re-float the ship. But after the herd looked at each other and went back to chewing the cud on Thursday, do not underestimate the Labour party’s ability to screw this up.
Have a good weekend. They won’t.
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