And so it comes to pass. The first Labour MP has broken cover to suggest, in public, that Sir Keir Starmer’s time in Downing Street may be drawing to a close – and not in a blaze of electoral glory. Jonathan Brash, the member for Hartlepool, ventured onto GB News yesterday to remark that Starmer’s departure is “not a case of if, but when”. If the Labour whips’ office were functioning, one would have heard a collective intake of breath.
Brash dressed it up in the language of duty. “Ultimately,” he said, “we’re in a situation now where I don’t think anyone reasonably expects the Prime Minister to lead the party into the next election. And I think that we have to refocus this government on the priorities of the British people.” Quite. The “psychodrama” engulfing No. 10, as he called it, has ceased to be containable.
There have been murmurings for a while now of Labour MPs kicking off about a “toxic culture” emanating from Starmer’s inner circle. But this is no longer confined to anonymous briefings of the backbenches. The more telling sign is the hesitancy, bordering on paralysis, among senior ministers and even the cabinet.
Consider Pat McFadden, a figure not generally associated with bouts of either disloyalty or media failures. A key Starmer figure, well-wired into the party machine, and hardly given to freelancing. Yet when pressed on whether he asked No. 10 if the Prime Minister had sought an ambassadorship for Matthew Doyle, his former communications chief, McFadden couldn’t really muster it. After three minutes of evasive manoeuvres, he landed on: “No, because I don’t think the Prime Minister would be in the position of picking up a phone on a personnel matter like that…” An effort for some plausible deniability, but if this is the best that can be offered, the cupboard is bare.
Look too at the anonymous briefings to The Guardian and The i. One cabinet minister said: “It’s bleak … It’s a question for the Cabinet and colleagues need to come to a view. I know what my view is.”
The obvious mood at Prime Minister’s Questions did little to lift spirits. Nobody on the government benches seemed happy because, really, what is there to be happy about in the approach to local elections. It looks likely that it will be the final PMQs of this session so that Starmer can avoid more Mandelson questioning.
Though even that may prove optimistic. The Foreign Affairs Committee has already summoned Morgan McSweeney, alongside the Cabinet Office’s top civil servant Cat Little, to account for the circumstances of Mandelson’s appointment. Sir Philip Barton, formerly of the Foreign Office, is also due to appear – and may yet shed unwelcome light on the pressure No10 placed on pushing Mandelson’s appointment through quickly.
Curiously, not everyone on the Conservative benches is in a hurry to see the back of Starmer. There is a certain cold logic to their patience. One Tory MP confides that the ideal scenario is to keep Starmer “teetering, hanging over the cliff”, with Rachel Reeves still installed at the Treasury. That, they thought, would be the best option for the Tories to capitalise on. A shadow cabinet figure is blunter: the pair’s unpopularity makes them a convenient electoral target. Introduce a wildcard – Angela Rayner, say – and the calculus becomes less straightforward. Better, perhaps, the devil you know, particularly if he looks increasingly diminished.
Yet this is not a moment of comfort for the Opposition. Tory MPs are under no illusions about their own predicament. Donors, they say, are openly sceptical and challenging about the party’s claim to be a government-in-waiting. Some Conservatives now speak, with a hint of melancholy, about no longer being a truly national party – expectations are low in Scotland and even lower in Wales, with even their southern heartlands no longer confidently assured.
When I mentioned a recent poll that had Reform on 27 per cent, the Greens on 17 per cent and the Conservative Party, too, on 17 per cent, I was corrected by a member of Badenoch’s team that actually the average is 18.2 per cent. As one shadow minister drily observed since, “well that is very reassuring…”