So, he’s faced them down. It seems that Keir Starmer is proving to be as obstinate and awkward as he’s sometimes suggested his father, the most famous toolmaker in history, used to be.
We cannot know, but the prime minister may even have listened to his “absolute rock”, Victoria, and decided – in the words of a former embattled prime minister – to fight on and fight to win.
The PM’s stubbornness in front of his rivals in cabinet (and beyond…) is unchanged from his Monday speech: Labour had promised not to be self-indulgent like the Conservatives, my going would solve nothing and would cause the bond markets to panic, and a seventh prime minister in a decade is not in the national interest.
As Starmer used to say, he puts “party before country”. He has heard what his rebel MPs have been saying, he has listened to them and argued back, refused to budge, and effectively dared the doubters in his cabinet to quit.
In the end, there is nothing they can do to force him out, except to gather the 81 signatures of Labour MPs to launch a leadership challenge and all that entails – including taking on Starmer himself in a bloody civil war. “Come and get me if you think you’re hard enough” is the attitude.
It must be said, it didn’t quite work for Boris Johnson when his government disintegrated under his feet with mass resignations, but we shall see. In this case, the Labour Party rulebook is a defensive iron dome against swarmed drone attacks from backbenchers. They just bounce off the prime minister. So much for being “weak”.
There were signs. Watching the cabinet arrive in Downing Street for the most consequential such session in some years, if not decades, the theatrical aspects were fairly revealing. David Lammy and Lord Hermer, fellow lawyers, looked ridiculously happy as they arrived, as if they were about to join their colleagues in some sort of victory party - men who looked very much like they’d fixed it for Sir Keir Starmer KC. Starmer’s Praetorian guard, Liz Kendall and Peter Kyle, were sunnier than they’d any right to be, given way the political wind has changed.
By contrast, Rachel Reeves’ official car appeared to almost drive into No 11 so that she wouldn’t have to react to the reporters’ shouted questions – uncharacteristic shyness that told its own story. (The chancellor is rumoured to have had a row about Starmer with her sister, Ellie Reeves, also a cabinet minister, with the chancellor proving the most loyal.)
Then came Wes Streeting, looking grim-visaged, as far from his usual chirpy self, possibly contemplating a Heseltine-style resignation-by-walkout. You couldn’t be sure if he was simmering about Starmer’s stubborn refusal to go quietly, or at his own hastiness in fomenting a failed assassination without ever wishing to wield the knife himself.
Starmer’s gambit may not yet work. If things go as some of us fear, before too long the King will be sending for his fourth prime minister in his short reign – and, given the febrility within the governing party, there could even be another one in quick succession after that.
Starmer’s “interim” replacement would probably be deputy party leader David Lammy, who would then give way to a permanent prime minister selected by about 300,000 entirely unrepresentative Labour activists in an internecine war lasting for months.
But without supposed favourite, Andy Burnham, unable to take part, it won’t even settle the leadership issue. That is just as offensive a prospect as when some 140,000 Conservative Party members foisted Liz Truss on us in September 2022. It will be an appalling spectacle, and would send Labour into political exile again for years.
We know that Starmer “came up on the doorstep” in last week’s elections, and a lot of Reform voters despise him. But there will be an awful lot of people in the coming weeks wondering why and under whose authority Starmer has been deposed after less than two years in office. Who says the British want to be led by Wes Streeting or Andy Burnham or Angela Rayner or Ed Miliband (who they rejected once already, back in 2015).
This Labour Party promised an end to psychodrama. They will not be forgiven for inflicting another one on the country. They’ve actually got more important things to do.
