Immediate threat to Starmer has passed but his position remains precarious | Keir Starmer
“Is it over?” That was the question Labor MPs were asking themselves and each other. However, the meaning has changed in the last 24 hours.
Since the chaos in the House of Commons last Wednesday afternoon with the release of the Peter Mandelson papers, MPs believed this was the final throes of Keir Starmer’s leadership.
But what appeared to be the beginning of a coup – Scottish Labor leader Anas Sarwar calling on Starmer to resign – turned out to be a seemingly damp farce.
When the Prime Minister is really struggling, people often see a different side of him. MPs who had been darkly briefing on his future for weeks said they were actually persuaded to give him another chance by his fight speech to MPs and colleagues on Monday evening.
As one MP put it: “We started with a heartfelt apology, it was like a Scottish Presbyterian-style meeting full of regrets. By the end it was like MPs singing a Southern Baptist hallelujah.”
So now “is it over?” takes on a new meaning: Is the danger over for Keir Starmer? As one soft-spoken cabinet minister said as he hurried out of the House of Commons on Monday evening: “No.”
Leadership change is a difficult genie to put back in the bottle. Scottish Tory leader Douglas Ross called on Boris Johnson to resign in 2022, to little effect. But Johnson eventually had to leave after a few months.
Just look at the numbers. A speech in private at a meeting of the Parliamentary Labor Party (PLP) is a good start but does not change Labour’s plight.
The party is at historic lows in the polls, well behind Reform and in some polls it sits in fourth place behind the Greens and Conservatives.
Starmer is the most unpopular prime minister on record, strange as that may sound compared to recent history. The reason for reaching this voting depth is that his supporters have lost confidence in him in the last 18 months. Combined with his natural skepticism, this means the ground is much lower.
There is a by-election in Gorton and Denton on February 26 and the party is likely to come third after Andy Burnham was removed from the ballot paper, partly by Starmer’s own decision.
More conversations between Mandelson and ministers are likely to be published, which could lead to new embarrassments and widen the web of blame even further. And then there is the May election – and the expected loss of the Welsh Senedd, a renewed defeat in Scotland with a rebel Scottish leader – and the loss of councils across London to the Greens and independents.
But of course, Starmer still has a chance to survive these perilous moments, even a record-breaking loss of popularity. Labor might even win Gorton; Campaigners on the ground say the return of the canvassers is not as hopeless as feared.
Expectation management has done a good job of preparing lawmakers for the worst-case scenario in May. And the release of the Mandelson texts could save the prime minister from personal embarrassment, given that their relationship has never been that close.
With any luck since Starmer won the election, he may be able to escape these known threats. It’s still possible for something unknown to happen, like the Chris Pincher groping scandal that unseated Johnson after he escaped the Ross tip and the Partygate investigation. Even if he spilled some cold water on his speech on Monday night, the PLP is still a firebrand.
But what many of the cabinet and most thoughtful members of the PLP want to see is for Starmer to seize the moment of greatest danger for a wider reset, see “Keir let go” – if Morgan McSweeney were on the leash – and embrace a much more progressive policy and economic reset. He has regained some goodwill, but how he uses it will determine the next phase of his leadership and whether it is the final phase.
