FT’s Shrimsley.
The final blow I haven’t seen the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) this unhappy and angry, across such a wide range of the party’s factions and traditions, since the summer of 2016, when Britain voted to leave the EU. Many MPs attributed part of the blame to Jeremy Corbyn’s half-hearted campaigning for Remain.
That anger triggered a leadership challenge, albeit an ill-conceived and obviously doomed one. Could the anger and upset — which is particularly acute in the women’s PLP — at Keir Starmer over the Mandelson affair and his handling of it trigger a challenge to Starmer’s leadership? Well, in the long run the answer is “yes, definitely”.
The prime minister’s leadership is in a terminal phase, and visibly neither he nor his trusted aides have it in them to turn that around. But in the short term, I have covered the ousting of three prime ministers (Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss) and on only one occasion (Liz Truss’s exit) did it happen quickly. Starmer is now at the same sort of point that Theresa May was in the summer of 2017, that Boris Johnson was after Partygate, and that Liz Truss was after the market reaction to her “mini” Budget.
Theresa May lasted two years. Boris Johnson a little under a year, Liz Truss 29 days. The situation is most like the one Johnson was in, where you would talk to a Conservative MP and they would say “this is awful, we can’t go on like this, someone should do something”. Indeed in 2024, I remember a visiting Canadian Liberal MP saying the same about Justin Trudeau’s ailing government.
But unless or until someone says “and that someone is me” these things can stagger on until some moment, crisis or resignation tips things over the edge. For Johnson, it was the resignations of Sajid Javid and Rishi Sunak that pushed him out. For Trudeau, it was Chrystia Freeland’s resignation. Starmer’s government could fall over today if some cabinet minister decides “you know what, I’ve had enough of this”.
It could come to a cropper if Labour loses the Gorton by-election on February 26. It could come to an end on March 22, when the government’s planned increase in fuel duty comes into effect. Or it could stagger on until early 2029. Me saying “Starmer’s government is on its last legs” could look really prescient in half an hour or really stupid in two years’ time.
But make no mistake, Starmer’s leadership is now in a state of extreme vulnerability, and it is now a question of what or who delivers the final blow.