Even those who dislike Keir Starmer might feel a smidgen of pity – on a human level – for his plight as he tries to cling on in Downing Street. The Prime Minister is being assailed from every direction of his divided government and party with blunt advice about what he needs to do in order to survive following Labour’s disastrous performance in last week’s local elections.
Starmer won’t quit. Every Prime Minister has to be dragged kicking and screaming from office
Starmer, to use Norman Lamont’s withering political putdown of John Major, is in office but not in power. His future and that of his ailing administration now rests apparently on the speech he will deliver later today. Get it wrong and his political assassins are ready to strike him down. It is a tall order for a politician who has hitherto demonstrated no great flights of oratory and struggles to articulate a coherent political vision that others might rally round. If Starmer had any sense, beyond the desire to survive all costs, he would use today’s speech to announce that he is standing down, leaving it to his colleagues in government and the wider party to fight it out between them for the succession.
Starmer won’t quit, of course. Every Prime Minister has to be dragged kicking and screaming from office. All that remains is the grisly spectacle of his inevitable political defenestration. It doesn’t much matter whether that’s days, weeks or months really. His race is run.
Yet in the fantasy world of the Downing Street bunker, it is all to play for. The survival strategy comes down to yet one more “reset” speech from Starmer. This is the big one, apparently, in which he will try to persuade Labour MPs that he can turn the party’s fortunes around. This speech, we are told, will unleash the real Starmer, his core values and so forth. The speech is expected to offer something in the way of new policy announcements and a renewed pledge to seek closer relations with the EU. He will also talk about a better offer for young people (a youth mobility scheme with the EU) and tackling violence against women and girls. It all sounds like the same old Starmer, incremental rather than big political picture or vision. Even so, is anyone really listening?
In truth, Starmer arrives at this perilous moment in his leadership weaker than ever. Everything that he has said and done since the election results last Thursday night has only managed to make his situation worse. The morning after the polls, Starmer was out and about declaring that he took responsibility for Labour’s poor showing, without actually taking responsibility for anything. He went on to insist that he would “not walk away and plunge the country into chaos” – even though large numbers of voters clearly think the country is in chaos because of his leadership.
It’s all classic Starmer: cliche after political cliche but uttered without any real sense of purpose or conviction. To cap it all, Starmer declared in a Sunday newspaper interview that he intended to remain in office for a decade and that his government was a “ten-year project of renewal.”
Reading the room has never been his strong point. That’s why anyone pinning any hopes that today’s make-or-break speech will unleash a new Starmer, ready and willing to change his ways, is guaranteed to be disappointed.
Meanwhile, pressure for a Labour leadership contest is mounting. The fury and despair among his ministers and MPs behind the scenes is widely known. What is more blatant now is the public derision for their leader in Downing Street. Labour MP, Catherine West, was first out of the blocks, calling for cabinet ministers to challenge the Prime Minister. West was quickly followed by Josh Simons, another former minister, who said the Prime Minister has “lost the country” and is incapable of “rising to this moment”.
Later in the day came the twisting of the knife from Angela Rayner, the former deputy PM, who accused her leader of “toxic cronyism” and demanded the return of Andy Burnham to parliament. No one quite knows what comes next, the how and when. Health Secretary Wes Streeting, when questioned by Downing Street about his intentions, is understood to have said he would not challenge Starmer directly but is preparing a “case” for a leadership challenge in case “it all falls apart”. All the pretenders to Starmer’s crown are watching and waiting for the right moment.
The blame for this state of affairs must ultimately lie with the Prime Minister himself. He comes across as ever more hapless, buffeted by events which he knows not how to control, yet somehow insisting he can cling on to power. Pinning his hopes on yet one more speech is simply deluded. Starmer will struggle (as he always does) to say anything interesting or arresting. The fury of his Labour party audience will be all the greater afterwards. It is all a touch humiliating. The Prime Minister should accept that his time in office is over and, in the process, salvage some personal dignity.
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