“At Westminster the herd instinct is powerful and, when the herd moves, it moves.”
So observed one former Prime Minister after being forced from office following a cascade of ministerial resignations and MPs demanding his departure.
The line could just as easily describe the predicament now confronting Sir Keir Starmer, with nearly 80 Labour MPs last night publicly urging him to stand aside.
Yet it was Boris Johnson – the very Prime Minister Starmer pursued so relentlessly from the opposition benches – who delivered those words, resigning on the steps of Downing Street in July 2022.
Now the same fate appears to await the Labour Prime Minister. For all Sir Keir’s insistence that “I’m not going to plunge this country into chaos”, I’m afraid he already has. There is a certain poetry in the mirroring of Johnson’s downfall.
Last night, we are told, three cabinet ministers went to see him like the ghosts haunting Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol, there to point out the errors of his ways. Two names remain unknown, though it is widely reported that Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood was the third – and, even without confirmation of the full trio, one suspects Mahmood would have made a convincing Ghost of Christmas Future in the political world. They urged the Prime Minister to consider his position, something Ed Miliband already floated almost a week ago when he suggested to Starmer that he set out a resignation timetable.
Today the Prime Minister faces his cabinet, remarkably few of whom have chosen to rally publicly to his side. The mood has only worsened since Sir Keir’s supposed make-or-break speech, which seemed merely to break the Labour Party further. It amounted to another portion of managerial word salad – focus-grouped clichés that somehow still require an autocue – garnished with a nod towards closer relations with the European Union. If that was a Prime Minister fighting for his political life, one struggles to imagine the comatose version.
The remaining pro-Starmer briefings insist it would be selfish for rival factions to continue their regicidal manoeuvres, claiming it would only inflict further damage on Labour. Yet one might reasonably ask whether Sir Keir’s own desperate attempts to cling on are not the greater selfishness.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has, in effect, begun a leadership bid by proxy already. His ministerial aide Joe Morris has resigned, while neighbouring MP Jas Athwal has openly called for Starmer to go. Streeting’s allies want a contest wrapped up swiftly, before Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham can engineer a return to Westminster.
The distinction between the rival camps is already obvious. Streeting allies will call for a “rapid process” (to install him soon), while Burnham’s will push for an “orderly transition” (to give him time to find a seat).
The soft left are furious at the prospect of a leadership race conducted without Burnham. They argue that any Streeting victory under such circumstances would lack legitimacy. Some Labour figures have gone so far as to brief Bloomberg that, were Streeting to succeed, they would seek to remove him from Number 10 faster than Liz Truss. Even the Conservatives did not attempt to take down a leader before the crown had touched their head. It shows quite the flair for the dramatics.
Still the Tories feel they’re missing out. One shadow cabinet minister messaged yesterday: “Coups used to be fun. Now we just watch from the sidelines. We were much better at it.”
Another quipped: “We are available for any and all tips.”
Do not expect much noise from Conservative headquarters while Labour tears itself apart. “Why would we come out with anything while they are tearing at each other’s throats?” one CCHQ source gleefully told me.
One of the things they know from experience, too, is that it won’t end here. Ousting leaders and allowing a contest while in government fuels pre-existing tensions in the parliamentary party and lets them spread through the system – it is difficult to contain afterwards.
Conservatives have long hoped to destabilise the Labour government through a steady campaign of pressure and forced U-turns. Yet arguably it was Nigel Farage and Reform who delivered the decisive blow at the local elections. In truth, however, the roots of this crisis lie within Labour itself: the absence of any real intellectual energy or plan for governing from Starmer and his circle beyond the determination to stay put.
This may all delight the opposition parties – though some Tory MPs privately worry that a post-Starmer Labour leader could prove a more formidable opponent – but it is an extraordinary spectacle for a governing party at a moment of economic fragility. From Labour’s perspective, a changing of the guard after Sir Keir and Rachel Reeves had absorbed the economic pain might have been the more rational course. But Westminster is rarely governed that way. When the herd moves, it moves.
Conservative MPs once had to confront the suspicion that the man best suited to winning an election for them – Boris Johnson – might not have been the right man to govern the country. Labour MPs are now asking themselves precisely the same question about Sir Keir Starmer.
Starmer encouraged the herd when it turned on Johnson. Now he finds himself beneath its hooves.