For something that’s apparently only a ‘desperate political stunt’, Keir Starmer is taking the looming vote on whether to refer him to the privileges committee pretty seriously. There is a gargantuan effort tonight underway behind the scenes to persuade Labour MPs not to vote for the referral that the Tories want to make, with Labour grandees including Gordon Brown making public statements of support for the Prime Minister.
This effort may pay off to the extent that the Tories only get to say to voters on the doorstep that their Labour MP blocked an investigation into the Prime Minister. But as with all prime ministers who reach this level of ‘embattled’, it only delays the inevitable. The only argument that is being made – that really can be made – by Starmer’s allies is that it would be political suicide to vote for such an investigation just before the local elections and when the Prime Minister is ‘getting all the big calls right’ in terms of the Iran war. But none of that is really an argument for Starmer himself, unless you believe that his greatest achievement as prime minister really has been deciding not to do something, as in the case of Iran.
There is no attempt now to argue that Starmer has a domestic agenda that can’t be abandoned halfway through: at this stage of even the coalition government, with all its structural weaknesses, there were huge reforms underway in education, welfare and the economy. You might argue that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill has an ideological bent, but it is neither visionary nor transformative. To be fair, at least Labour hasn’t embarked on the kind of transformation of the NHS that the Tories spectacularly messed up with Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Act 2011, but neither has Starmer’s party really made any progress towards the preventive agenda that it waxed lyrical about in opposition. Welfare reform is now largely just extra pots of money for retraining. Starmer might feel busy on the world stage, but all prime ministers are. That’s not the sum total of their job, nor is it an argument for them remaining in post. And that’s the problem he will continue to have even if tomorrow turns out to be an anti-climax: he cannot really explain to Labour MPs what the point is of keeping him.
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