James Heale

James Murray, who replaced Wes Streeting as health secretary 13 days ago, is facing a fresh round of strikes by resident doctors next month. The walkout from 15 June until 19 June it will be the sixteenth in the long-running dispute over pay that began in May 2023. It followed a meeting earlier today between Murray and the British Medical Association (BMA). Murray has deviated little from his predecessor’s stance on this issue. He made it clear he was not willing to negotiate on pay, on the grounds that the union’s demands for more money are ‘unrealistic and unaffordable’. Resident doctors have received pay rises worth 33 per cent over the past four years, including a 3.5 per cent increase this year.

The loudest man in politics knows when to keep his silence. Nigel Farage held his tongue on Monday as Keir Starmer’s premiership floundered. Aside from a few PFLs – proper f***ing lunches – to celebrate the local election results, the Reform UK leader was already looking to the next challenge. Like a shark, Farage keeps moving forward, into new waters, hungry for more. One ally sums up his approach to politics in a single word: ‘Momentum’. For the past few months, Farage has had one goal: destroying the Tories. The figure ‘1,453’ was the total of gains proudly pumped out on Reform’s Instagram. For Farage, 7 May was the political equivalent of the fall of Constantinople – the point when the Conservatives ceased to be a national party.

Things are moving very fast in Westminster this evening. More than 60 Labour MPs are publicly calling on the Prime Minister to announce a date for his departure. The stream of these calls has ebbed and flowed in recent days – but the profile of the MPs has strikingly changed. On Friday night, it was the soft left out for Keir Starmer’s head; this evening it is the Labour right. Junior aides are now quitting the government, and resigning from their positions as parliamentary private secretaries (PPS). Three did so in quick succession this evening: Joe Morris, Sally Jameson and Tom Rutland, the respective PPSs for Wes Streeting, Shabana Mahmood and Emma Reynolds.  It is, in the words of one MP, ‘all one-way traffic, heading to the exit.

By inclination, tradition and design, the Labour Party is much less prone to toppling leaders than their Conservative counterparts. There is no equivalent to the 1922, Sir Graham Brady’s grin and the usual excited talk of ‘letters going in’. Perhaps an equivalent shorthand must now been coined for the process which is going on in the government ranks. The steady drip-drip-drip of MPs calling for Keir Starmer to quit has continued unabated for the past 48 hours. Now we are up to 36 names, with the latest perhaps being the most intriguing of all. ‘A sudden rush for a contest, encouraged by the soft left, could, inadvertently, end up putting the Blairite crown prince into No. 10.

In the aftermath of Thursday’s shellacking, a steady stream of Labour MPs have been coming out and calling on Keir Starmer to quit. Their tone has varied: some are much more coded than others. On Cofffee House, we have a rolling list that now stands at more than 30. A key tell is those arguing for ‘an orderly transition' – the subtext for which is ‘enough time until Andy Burnham can get into parliament’. The Mayor of Great Manchester would need months, not weeks, to fight and win a by-election that would allow him to return to parliament and thus claim the leadership. The precarious route by which that would happen has been enough to sew doubts in the minds of much of the Parliamentary Labour party (PLP).