Labour MPs want shot of Keir Starmer over the Peter Mandelson scandal. There is nothing new in that sentence until the mention of the former ambassador. Mandelson’s reported disclosure of government information to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is the latest pretext, but before that it was because he rebuffed the Waspi women, and before that because Andy Burnham wanted the job, and before that because he’s sunk Labour’s chances ahead of May’s Scottish elections, and if you keep going back there was Gaza and gender and the winter fuel payment debacle.
The experience of government is not what Labour MPs expected. The Labour party is a mass-membership moral superiority complex and its MPs and activists were happiest when railing against Boris Johnson and his ethically compromised government from the safety of the opposition benches. Now the party is in power and confronted with its own foibles and failings and it turns out being held to the standards you set for your opponents isn’t all that pleasant.
However, in deciding that Starmer is the problem and ousting him the answer, they are making the Tory mistake of prizing their frustrations (and ambitions) over the public’s greatest desire: a quiet life. The voters have, at least for now, made up their minds on the Prime Minister. He’s a dud, he can’t be trusted, he’s the same as all the rest of them. Yet the same electors would have almost zero patience for a leadership challenge.
For one, they are seldom keen on the prime minister they put in Downing Street being elbowed out by internal plotters. It feels like MPs are disparaging their judgement. They might not like Starmer but they would like it even less if he was replaced via a backroom vote by a union toady, an over-promoted spad or David Lammy. What they want from government is stability and effectiveness. A leadership challenge puts paid to the first with no guarantee of improving matters on the second.
Bouncing Starmer less than halfway through the government’s parliamentary term is an act of panic — pure desperation. And rather than stabilising the government’s fortunes it will reward the plotting and conniving against Starmer, and while Labour MPs might not be familiar with the concept, incentivising behaviour tends to produce more of it. Starmer’s replacement would only go so long before the briefings started up again in earnest. We know what that would mean. As John Howard is fond of cautioning: disunity in politics is death.
The parliamentary Labour Party would have to be nuts — downright certifiable — to make a move against Starmer right now. He’s the guy that got them there and however chaotic his government seems, it is a picture of serene productivity and cooperation compared to what could come after it.
Starmer is an electoral liability but there is no obvious electoral asset with whom to replace him. They will either have to hope the Prime Minister somehow turns things around or that a new contender presents himself (it’s the Labour party, it’s going to be himself) in time to switch leaders for the next general election. Until then, Labour MPs will have to do what they tell you in Texas: dance with the one that brung ya.
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