These are the worst of times for Sir Keir Starmer. They will not get better any time soon – if ever. He is reeling from the loss of his deputy prime minister and US ambassador within the space of six short days.
Both have undermined what reputation for competence and sound judgment he had left. Both will cast a long shadow over his premiership for the rest of the year, even as he’s forced to deal with more misery coming down the pike, including another tax-raising Budget.
Labour MPs and Downing Street insiders now regularly diss the PM and openly speculate among themselves about how long he can survive.
Some think he could be gone by Christmas (unlikely in my view), others that it will be all over for him by next summer (more likely).
Cacophony
Almost none believe he will lead Labour into the next general election, whenever it comes (I think you can take that to the bank).
It is a remarkable falling off, in speed and scale unprecedented in modern British politics, for a PM who was elected by a landslide only 14 months ago. There is no respite in sight. Far from the Blairite mantra ‘things can only get better’, it’s all about to get even worse.
Peter Mandelson, our erstwhile man in Washington, is incandescent with Starmer for ditching him. He thinks he was ‘hung out to dry’ – and is out for revenge.
As a master of the political dark arts he is a dangerous, if discredited, enemy.
Labour MPs and Downing Street insiders now regularly diss the PM and openly speculate among themselves about how long Sir Keir Starmer can survive
The weekend papers contained an avalanche of quotes from Labour sources expressing their dismay about Starmer and his Government.
Even The Guardian joined the cacophony: ‘It is becoming increasingly hard to find anybody in the Labour Party,’ it reported on Saturday, ‘who will argue things are going anything other than disastrously for the Government.’
I suspect Mandelson’s hand in some of this bad-mouthing. It is, after all, what he does best.
He’s already let it be known through ‘friends’ that he thinks Starmer hopelessly slow in taking big decisions and blames him for the abandoned welfare reforms.
He thinks the No 10 operation a shambles. There’s plenty more where that came from.
Then there’s the contest to replace Angela Rayner as Labour’s deputy leader. At a time when good news for Starmer is in short supply, I suppose he can take some comfort from the fact the contest is between two lacklustre plodders, Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary and enemy of decent schools, and Lucy Powell, who he recently fired from the Cabinet for being generally useless.
A fight between these two won’t set the heather on fire. But it will give vent to widespread disillusion with Starmer within the Labour Party, which he could do without, and publicly air all the party’s growing divisions.
It will turn Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool later this month into something of a hustings for a contest which many in the party see as a referendum on Starmer’s leadership: vote Phillipson if you want to be loyal, vote Powell if you want to send Starmer a message.
I suspect Mandelson’s hand in some of this bad-mouthing. It is, after all, what he does best. He’s already let it be known through ‘friends’ that he thinks Starmer hopelessly slow in taking big decisions and blames him for the abandoned welfare reforms
Powell is widely regarded as a stalking horse for Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, the self-styled ‘King of the North’ who is already on manoeuvres pushing a ‘soft Left’ alternative agenda to Starmer.
Among various ways of getting rid of Starmer now being discussed in Labour ranks, there’s much excited talk about finding Burnham a safe seat – all the better for him to pursue his ambition to replace Starmer from inside the House of Commons.
This shows a weak grasp of politics and political history. For a start, with Reform riding high in the polls, there is no such thing as a ‘safe’ Labour seat these days.
Second, even assuming you can find a compliant northern Labour MP prepared to make way for the ‘King of the North’, voters hate by-elections being foisted on them merely for the convenience of a politician or party.
The history of by-elections is replete with examples of parties losing safe seats because they took voters for pawns in their wider political games. So I wouldn’t rule out Burnham standing in a by-election and being beaten by Reform – plunging Labour into even more chaos than it’s in at the moment.
Labour is currently languishing at around 20 per cent in the polls, between ten and 15 points behind Reform. It’s quite the descent from last summer’s landslide. But it could be as good as it gets.
Jeremy Corbyn has yet to launch his new Left-wing party. They seem to be having trouble with a name (I have helpfully suggested the ‘Jezbollah Party’).
Jeremy Corbyn has yet to launch his new Left-wing party. They seem to be having trouble with a name (I have helpfully suggested the ‘Jezbollah Party’)
If it does get off the ground it will take another 3 to 4 percentage points off Labour’s miserable standing in the polls, placing them alongside the Tories in extinction territory at around 16 or 17 per cent.
Pathetic
The Merry Month of May 2026 has all the makings of Starmer’s Donnybrook, if he’s still around by then. Another thumping in local elections in England. The loss of the Welsh Senedd to Reform. Coming third behind the SNP and Reform in elections for the Scottish Parliament.
No Labour leader could survive losses on that scale. Starmer would be gone by the summer recess.
If Starmer’s prospects within Labour are grim they’re not any brighter in the wider world. The economy stagnated in July. It will be lucky to grow by a pathetic 1 per cent this year.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves is preparing to whack up taxes by billions for the second year in a row come the November Budget. No wonder business has fallen out of love with Labour. Starmer and Reeves wooed business relentlessly in the run-up to last year’s election. Our ever-gullible business class fell for it.
Then came last October’s Budget, which piled on extra taxes on business – something Starmer-Reeves had promised not to do. Now business is voting with its feet.
Undermine
In recent days Jim Ratcliffe has said his massive energy company, Ineos, will no longer invest in Britain because when it comes to oil and gas we have one of the most ‘unstable fiscal regimes in the world’. Instead, he has earmarked £3 billion for investment in America.
US Big Pharma giant Merck then announced that it’s moth-balling a £1 billion London research centre – already under construction near King’s Cross.
It plans to move its research to existing facilities in the US. ‘Simply put,’ said Merck, ‘the UK is not internationally competitive.’
Earlier this year, Britain’s AstraZeneca decided not to proceed with a £450 million facility in Merseyside. Last week it paused another £200 million investment in Cambridge.
You can argue oil and gas are yesterday’s industries – though we still use a lot of both. But life sciences are a 21st-century industry at which we’re meant to excel. Not under Labour.
As Labour enters a period of intense internal strife, the Government’s economic and business policies are falling apart.
The looming Budget is likely to be the most unpopular of modern times, with multi-billion-pound tax rises that will further undermine economic growth and deter business even more from investing in Britain.
It will also mark the beginning of the end of Starmer’s premiership. We don’t know exactly where or when or how, but we do know that he’s heading for the knacker’s yard ahead of his time, sooner rather than later, destined (with a number of recent PMs) to be no more than a footnote in British political history.
What happens after that is anybody’s guess.
