How Keir Starmer lost authority over two days of confusion and drama
As the afternoon faded in Westminster, final preparations were being made for Wednesday’s state opening of parliament, where King Charles will set out a year-long legislative programme for a government that even its most ardent allies fear might not last the week.Once again, here we are.Keir Starmer is still the UK’s prime minister.It is even possible he might be in a few months from now.But after two days punctuated by confusion and drama on a scale that belies Labour’s promise to end years of political upheaval, his authority appears shredded.
What is less certain is what exactly that means.It had been widely anticipated that Starmer would come under intense pressure should Labour face a drubbing in last Thursday’s elections in England, Scotland and Wales – which it duly did.A speech on Monday was heralded as a make-or-break reset, but widely considered a dud.Since then, almost a quarter of Starmer’s MPs have formally requested he step down, either now or at an agreed time in the coming months.Several ministers have resigned, with one of them, Jess Phillips, condemning the prime minister as too weak and process-driven to ever implement real change.
“I wasn’t sure where we were headed before, but it’s now clear it’s over,” one backbencher lamented.“You can only lead if you have the broad support of your party, and it’s now undeniably true that Keir doesn’t.”The demands for action have, however, not yet been coupled with a plan for what, or rather who, comes next.None of Wes Streeting, the health secretary, Angela Rayner, the former deputy prime minister, Ed Miliband, the energy secretary or Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester – viewed as the most likely challengers – has made a move.Burnham would have to find a route back to parliament first.
For now, there is something of an enforced stalemate.On Wednesday morning, the king will arrive in a gilded coach via a flag-adorned Parliament Square to read out a list of the bills that Starmer and his ministers hope to implement.While the ceremony cannot be moved – a new parliamentary session must begin – the spectacle risks seeming bizarre: “a King’s speech by a lame-duck PM, followed by five days of debate about a dead letter”, as one opposition MP put it.But how did we get here? It began on Saturday afternoon with an intervention from a source no one would have expected, least of all Starmer: Catherine West.The north London MP and former Foreign Office minister, bereft at watching so many Labour friends across the capital lose their council seats on Thursday, announced that, since no one else had, she would seek the names of the 81 Labour MPs needed to trigger a leadership challenge.
West’s quixotic crusade soon fizzled out.By Monday it had been downgraded to a mass email, then even that plan was dropped.But she had focused minds.Downing Street hoped a bold and passionate speech by Starmer on Monday morning would quell any rebellion.But while the prime minister was vehement, his new policy prescriptions – slightly closer EU ties, formally nationalising a British Steel already in de facto state control – were largely incremental.
And so, as the day went on, a list of MPs calling for a departure date, already with several dozen names, grew ever longer, as did rumours about a supposed rolling sequence of ministerial resignations – as used previously to topple prime ministers, notably Boris Johnson in 2022.In the end, however, the only departures on Monday were a handful of principal private secretaries, the lowest rung of frontbench roles.Later that evening a defiant Downing Street named other MPs in their place.Starmer was not giving up.The other traditional route to remove unpopular prime ministers is a procession of mournfully serious cabinet colleagues, who arrive to say that the game is up.
And this came next.It emerged on Monday evening that Yvette Cooper, the foreign secretary, and Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary, had told Starmer he needed to make way for someone else.Other senior ministers talked to the prime minister about what a “responsible, dignified, orderly” exit might look at.This was surely it? Once again, perhaps not.Tuesday did not begin well, with Darren Jones, a key Starmer ally in the cabinet, only able to tell broadcasters on the morning media round that “as far as I’m aware”, the king’s speech was taking place.
Around the same time, bond markets started wobbling on the anticipation of more political turmoil.The next set-piece was the regular Tuesday morning cabinet meeting.Before ministers had even emerged from it, No 10 officials sent out Starmer’s opening words to his ministers.“The Labour party has a process for challenging a leader and that has not been triggered,” he told his top team.“The country expects us to get on with governing.
That is what I am doing and what we must do as a cabinet.”This was followed by an official summary of the subsequent discussions which, even by the standards of such government missives, had the air of a Soviet-era bulletin on tractor production.Ministers, it concluded, were looking forward to the king’s speech and “reiterated their ambition to build a stronger, fairer United Kingdom where families feel safer and better off”.The reality inside the meeting appears somewhat more tense, with Starmer moving directly on from his combative opening remarks to a discussion about the Middle East, giving no one the chance to challenge him.Streeting is understood to have tried to chat privately to the prime minister at the end, but was rebuffed.
Starmer’s decision to dig in, it is fair to say, did not delight all his MPs.“King of the Limpets decided he would cling on for several more hours,” one said.“Every time with him it is process not politics.‘The proper process has not been triggered so I’m not going.’ Every speech is, ‘I’m going to be radical by moving a paperclip three inches to the left.
’”There was of course another, more nakedly political slant to Starmer’s words: an open challenge to Streeting to put up or shut up.Tuesday was punctuated by a series of ministerial resignations, if none – so far – at the very top.Miatta Fahnbulleh, a communities minister and ally of Miliband, went first.Then came Phillips, the safeguarding minister, the victims minister, Alex Davies-Jones, and Zubir Ahmed, a health minister – three Streeting allies.While there were a lot of events, none felt decisive, and perhaps served most of all to show how divided the government and the Labour party more widely are about what to do next.
On one side sits a list of 90-and-rising backbenchers calling for Starmer to go; on the other a letter signed by more than 100 MPs insisting a leadership race would be ludicrous and damaging.While some cabinet ministers very obviously feel a change is needed, a series spoke loyally to TV crews on Downing Street on Tuesday morning.Others are known to be privately furious at some of the ministerial resignations.Even among those seeking change, there were significant differences as to when.One camp with a very obvious motive to slow down the process are supporters of Burnham, who was spotted arriving in London on Tuesday.
Burnham is still the Greater Manchester mayor, and would need to win a byelection and become an MP to even contest the leadership – if the Labour hierarchy let him run, which they didn’t in February for the Gorton and Denton byelection.In contrast, there was a clear incentive for Streeting to strike early, given the assumption, even in his own camp, that Burnham would be more likely to win a vote of Labour ministers.Somewhere in the middle sit allies of Miliband, a former Labour party leader who has publicly said he does not want to resume a job he held over 2010-15, but might nonetheless go for if the only alternative was Streeting.“All of us would have preferred to wait until closer to the election, those people calling for him to stay, none of them think [Starmer] can fight the next election, they just want to wait longer,” one MP said.“But the truth is he is so bad we can’t wait.
Every month people are harder to win back.Many have already gone for good.”Starmer is the UK’s sixth prime minister in just under a decade.We might soon be welcoming a seventh.Answering questions after his speech on Monday, the prime minister rejected the idea of that the country is now “ungovernable”.
The coming days and weeks might challenge that view.
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Ah, ah, ah, ah - I saved my dad’s life with a little help from The Office and the Bee Gees