Why do Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer keep making me think about the Duke of York? No, not the infamous defenestrated royal but he of the old mocking nursery rhyme. Well, they have marched us all, public, media and (expensively) the markets up Income Tax Hill and then down again.
In the process, they’ve unintentionally turbocharged the speculation surrounding the looming defenestration of the prime minister himself with a field of tipped runners and riders that had me posting it could take on Grand National proportions. That was before the Mail on Sunday’s political duo of Glen Owen and Dan Hodges set about unseating Sir Keir with a double page spread headlined, “The number of MPs jockeying to unseat Starmer has reached Grand National Levels” (November 16).
Across both right- and left-wing titles, the names being touted included Wes Streeting, Andy Burnham, Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband, Bridget Phillipson and newly-elected Labour party deputy leader Lucy Powell. My own contacts suggest at least three more dark horse ‘outsiders’ are actively exploring mounting a challenge once starters orders are closer. Then there’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, but more of her later.
Last week, this column reported on the challenge to Starmer being very much on the cards, but with the majority of my sources saying it wouldn’t happen in earnest until after what the polls predict to be next May’s severe drubbing in the Scottish and Welsh elections and local elections in parts of England, including London.
Misfiring Machiavelli
But after the last week’s extraordinary beyond satire display of Number 10 chaos, confusion, contradiction and comedic ineptitude, a handful of those sources weren’t ruling out it coming considerably sooner. Maybe early in the new year if not before Christmas. “The reaction to Rachel’s Budget next Wednesday in the market, the opinion polls and in the papers could see knives being sharpened on a swifter timetable,” was how one junior minister put it.
A YouGov survey for The Times, published on Tuesday, prompted the front page headline: “Nearly half of all Labour voters want Starmer out by next election”. The poll revealed that 23% of Labour voters want the PM to quit immediately. The only consolation for Sir Keir and his diminishing number of allies is that it could have been worse.
Meanwhile pressure continues to mount on a beleaguered PM to dispense with his Downing Street stable jockey, Morgan McSweeney, the chief of staff dubbed the ‘Misfiring Machiavelli’ in the wake of the botched media briefing that the prime minister was determined to fight against any attempt to remove him and citing health secretary Wes Streeting as being part of a “plot” to do so.
Amid much media mockery, Sir Keir implausibly denied that the briefing originated from inside Number 10 and indicated he would stand by McSweeney. For what it’s worth, every backbencher and minister I know fingered the chief of staff as authorising the backfiring briefing operation even if he didn’t personally deliver the message to selected political correspondents. While Labour grandee Lord Blunkett used the pages of the Mail on Sunday to advise the prime minister to remove McSweeney from his post and appoint a ‘better suited’ chief of staff.
Sacking McSweeney would be a major wrench for Keir Starmer, however. They are a longstanding partnership with McSweeney playing a pivotal role in Starmer winning the election to succeed Jeremy Corbyn and “masterminding” Labour’s landslide election victory. But ‘masterminding’ isn’t the word being used by those Labour MPs who thought (like this column) that the manifesto pledge not to raise the basic rate of income tax, VAT or employee national insurance was a needless straitjacket to lock yourself into to defeat a broken, discredited Tory government with dangerously unpredictable times ahead.
The prime minister’s potentially suicidal loyalty to McSweeney exemplified when he stood by him even after his role championing Lord Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador despite the known evidence of his links to Jeffrey Epstein.
Although Starmer was forced to apologise to Wes Streeting over the ‘plotter’ briefing, few believe the relationship between the PM and his health secretary can really be healed or Streeting’s ambitions anything but ignited. Last weekend’s Sunday Times carried a front page story headlined, ‘Streeting and McSweeney’s shouting match’ in which the latter denied briefing against the former, but the Sunday Times claimed the pair were already at odds, had stopped speaking to each other for weeks and that allies of McSweeney were convinced Streeting would “demand a coronation” after the budget.
Budgeting for chaos
‘Briefing’ is also very much the word around the budget build up debacle. With the Financial Times revealing last Friday that Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer had decided to drop raising income tax after all, despite an unprecedented series of authorised government leaks, that extraordinary ‘pitch rolling’ breakfast time TV speech / press conference by the chancellor virtually announcing a u-turn on the ‘no income tax rise’ manifesto pledge. Even last Monday, Reeves invited BBC Radio 5 Live’s Matt Chorley into Number 11 for a lengthy on-air chat that, to all intents and purposes, only reinforced the tax rise strategy. No UK government in living memory has so blatantly breached the pre-budget convention of omerta.
So, when the Financial Times U-turn scoop dropped, it sparked an explosion of print and broadcast follow ups, encompassing days of headlines reflecting anger, bewilderment, political debunking and, unsurprisingly, spooked the financial markets to boot. Momentarily, fears of Liz Truss2 flared up. The FT acknowledged that its source was the Office of Budget Responsibility which had been informed by Reeves of the sensational change of plan.
Reeves alibi was that a better than anticipated forecast by the OBR itself justified her dramatic change of heart. True, but only up to a point. Few commentators, left or right, doubted that both the chancellor and her boss the PM had been panicked by fear of a public opinion backlash and a new Commons revolt on the scale of the welfare cuts humiliation by Labour MPs irrevocably opposed to abandoning a key manifesto pledge.
Unsurprisingly, the right-wing papers were merciless in targeting Starmer over both the leadership challenge psychodrama and the budget volte face.(Or should that read farce?)
Crisis before Christmas?
One example: Andrew Neil’s November 15th Daily Mail column headlined, “The Chancellor looks haunted, distraught, even helpless. I now believe there’s every chance of a financial crisis — perhaps even before Christmas”. Deriding the decision to rip up the much-trumpeted income tax increase in favour of a ‘smorgasbord’ of smaller taxes, Neil predicted “Team Starmer won’t hesitate to dump” Reeves.
The Sunday Times had a little fun with pointing out that the previous week, its new business section columnist had predicted the financial forecasts would be better than billed and Reeves could avoid hiking the basic income tax rise if she chose to. His name? Rishi Sunak who also donates his column fees to charity. No hardship there, then.
But there was cold comfort for a punch drunk prime minister from the Observer’s left-leaning and exceptionally well connected chief political commentator Andrew Rawnsley in his November 16th column.
“By giving briefings to journalists that their man would fight any challenge to his leadership, they stupidly confirmed that an attempt to topple him is what keeps them awake at night. By attempting to ‘kneecap’ Wes Streeting by suggesting the health secretary was planning an imminent coup, they gave him the opportunity to give a masterclass in his superior communications skills when faced with a tricky situation. It was humorously deft to suggest the poisonous whisperers had spent too much time watching The Celebrity Traitors and call it ‘the most unjustified attack against the Faithfuls’.
“Thus did a cunning plan designed to fortify the prime minister by flushing out conspirators make him even weaker, as some in Number 10 were grimly acknowledging by the end of the week. A government source calls it a “fucking stupid, shoot-yourself-in-the-face briefing. They made a cack-handed attempt to smoke Wes out and all they’ve done is increase his share price,” wrote Rawnsley.
What a carry on…
He went on savagely to suggest: “The impression conveyed is that the animating emotions within Downing Street are fear and paranoia. It is reminiscent of the late Kenneth Williams playing Julius Caesar in Carry on Cleo when he pathetically laments: ‘Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!’ Not that they are entirely wrong about that. A substantial proportion of the parliamentary Labour party and a growing body within the cabinet have got it in for their leader.”
That last Rawnsley paragraph very much echoed by my own sources who concurred with the Rawnsley column’s final conclusion: “If the opinion polls are broadly correct and nothing dramatically improves for the government between now and then, Labour is facing dreadful outcomes in the contest for the Welsh Senedd, the Scottish parliament and the local elections in England. Catastrophe at these elections the likeliest catalyst for the simmering volcano to go the full Krakatoa. Any more weeks of self-inflicted disaster as terrible as this will increase the chances of a leadership challenge from highly probable to racing certainty.”
So it was against that backdrop that Keir Starmer took the gamble of giving his new home secretary, the formidable Shabana Mahmood her head to announce the draconian crackdown on illegal immigration and the asylum system. Partly-based on that of Denmark’s centre left government’s success in overcoming a hard right surge à la Reform here. Privately, no one in Number 10 denies that it is a dramatic policy shift ‘inspired’ by Reform’s currently unshakeable polling lead.
It is also true that former justice secretary Mahmood is a ‘tough cookie’ who had long wanted to make a move that her predecessor as home secretary Yvette Cooper would have baulked at. It is undoubtedly true, too, that Shabana Mahmood’s back story helps with the gamble. A Muslim woman, born to politically active working class Pakistani immigrant parents in Small Heath, Birmingham, Mahmood went on to Oxford and became a very successful barrister before her passion for politics took precedence. Significantly, perhaps, the MP for Ladywood, Birmingham, identifies herself as a ‘social conservative’ associated with the ‘Blue Labour’ faction of the party founded by Labour peer Lord Maurice Glassman. He recently described her as, “clearly the leader of our part of the party”.
One calculation is that while that link makes some on the left deeply suspicious — or openly hostile — toward her on the migration issue, it could prove a bonus with ‘Red Wall’ MPs with slender majorities set to lose their seats to Reform unless the polling tide can be turned.
Why a revolt size matters
Even an MP contact who rebelled over the welfare issue tells me: “Yes, there will be a sizeable revolt over Shabana’s plan but no, it won’t be as big as the welfare one and the government won’t need support from the Tories or Reform to get it through the Commons eventually. Although I regard parts of her proposed reforms as too tough, even cruel, I won’t be rebelling this time. There’s an even bigger principle at stake. Keeping Reform out of power and Farage out of Number 10 and this might be the only way to achieve that.”
One source close to Mahmood herself put it this way to me: “While Shabana accepts the small minority of people who are fascists will elect to vote for Reform, she also accepts that there are many ordinary, decent people who traditionally voted Labour but whose genuine concern over migration, particularly illegal migration, has driven them into Reform’s arms. What she doesn’t accept is that they can’t be won back again. She’s convinced that, without the immigration card, the dark, dangerous, Trumpian side of Reform can be effectively exposed and turned against them at the ballot box. But she understands how big the challenge she faces is and how important it is Number 10 holds its nerve.”
Talking to a senior Reform strategist, I got this response: “Mahmood is probably the only Labour minister who could win some Labour voters back from us. But we’re confident that by moving in our direction, she’ll alienate more on Labour’s left who’ll defect to the Greens and the Corbyn / Sultana brigade. Or simply not vote.”
On a personal note, I found her Commons speech on Monday and the monumental policy shift that goes with it, a mixture of the tactically good, the arguably bad and, in places, unnervingly ugly.
F-Wording the Commons!
By common consent, however, it was a tour de force. An electric, even historic, moment came when she described her own experience of being called a ‘Fucking Paki’ and told to go home. Parliamentary propriety dictated the Speaker ordered her to apologise for using the F-word which she duly did, albeit sotto voce.
But the impact she had intended had been powerfully delivered. Broadcasters covering the major speech live carried that dramatic moment, even though hasty apologies were aired and subsequent recordings had the F-word bleeped over. (*In this day and age and in such momentous circumstances, is censorious coyness really required, I ask?). Earlier Deputy Speaker Caroline Nokes had also admonished the home secretary for revealing much of her crackdown plans in media interviews before announcing them to parliament.
Mahmood also deftly dealt with opportunistic offers of support from Kemi Badenoch, who pointedly chose to respond to the speech herself rather than follow the convention of leaving to her shadow home secretary, the over eager but lacklustre Chris Philp. Deftly handled, too, were attacks from Labour’s left, including taunts over Nigel Farage and his deputy Richard Tice suggesting she should apply to join them and — horror of horrors — praise from Tommy Robinson who she was swift to brand a violent racist.
So how did the national papers react? Just three samples to be going on with… The Mail very much in its default position, praising Mahmood’s ‘courage’ but predicting that the policy didn’t go far enough and in any case would be torpedoed by a combination of left-wing MPs and the title’s bête noir, ‘Lefty Lawyers’.
In its main leader headlined ‘Sea Change’, The Times argued: “Shabana Mahmood has set out a brave and radical rethink of the asylum system. Her challenge lies in convincing Labour MPs that their survival depends on it… If Labour succeeds in cutting illegal immigration, it has a chance of seeing off Nigel Farage’s Reform UK at the polls. If it fails, it will likely be scuppered.”
The leader also approvingly quotes (with asterisks, alas) the home secretary’s full Commons rebuff to a Labour critic… “I wish I had the privilege of walking around this country and not seeing the division that the issue of migration and the asylum system is creating. Unfortunately, I am the one that is regularly called a f***ing P*** and told to go back home.”
The leader concluded: “If Ms Mahmood succeeds on migration, and the economy improves, Labour may yet be in with a chance at the next election. Failure on small boats will sink it for sure. Sir Keir must back her.”
For the Guardian, coverage naturally posed trickier problems. Witness the front-page headline on Tuesday: ‘Starmer faces Labour revolt over hardline asylum plans… Mahmood’s proposals ‘straight out of far-right playbook’, say critics”
In sharp contrast to the Mail and Times, its main leader headlined, ‘Labour’s asylum curbs will trap refugees in limbo and risk boosting Reform’
The final paragraph capturing the Guardian’s position graphically: “In post Brexit politics, it’s hard to see how one out-Farages Nigel Farage. Yet that is what the Labour government is trying to do. Copying Reform UK’s cruelty on asylum lets Mr Farage own the issue, outbid Labour and drive the debate rightward at no cost. Worse, Labour increases the salience of an issue that it cannot solve on its own and gifts right wingers the advantage, while setting itself up to look cruel and incompetent.”
Hearts or heads?
The dilemma for many of us is that, while our hearts may agree with The Guardian, our heads tell us something else when it comes to combatting Reform and Farage.
Elsewhere in his perceptive Observer column, Andrew Rawnsley had written: “Pick a Labour faction and the headline complaints about Sir Keir are the same: no vision, no direction, no elan…”
Agree with her or not, you don’t sense those particular shortcomings apply to Shabana Mahmood. Indeed, Sir Keir’s survival chances truly could depend heavily on her. Unless, as some MPs and political journalists mused after her fiery parliamentary performance, could she even be the dark horse who comes through on the rails to replace him?
U-turning too, Mr President?
Not long before the US Congress voted unanimously on Tuesday for the Epstein Files to be made public, there was a fascinating moment at the White House. Irritated by a reporter’s question about his friendship with Epstein, the president snapped that he had kicked the financier out of Mar-a-Lago years before his sex trafficking conviction because he was a ‘sick pervert’. Which rather begs the question Epstein’s victims would like to know the answer to: Was Trump among the friends and associates of Epstein who were aware of — or suspected — his proclivities but did nothing, such as alerting the police?
The Epstein issue has become the biggest domestic crisis of Trump’s second term with him forced to u-turn on supporting the release of the files under pressure from his own MAGA base as well as Democrat politicians. The spectacular fallout with his longtime MAGA friend and champion Marjorie Taylor Greene, who he branded a ‘traitor’ for campaigning for the files to be released, backfired badly on Trump in the opinion polls.
Previously, the White House had consistently resisted the release despite Trump’s election campaign’s repeated pledges to do so. But even this president found he wasn’t immune from the epidemic of ‘cover up’ accusations and grudgingly and dramatically climbed down.
But some legal experts warn against too much euphoria over Trump signing the Epstein Files release. There are various mechanisms by which certain documents can still be withheld by the administration.
It isn’t good news for a certain Andrew Mountbatten Windsor either. With senior congress figures saying they will now renew legal efforts to force the fallen royal to testify under oath to its ongoing Epstein Inquiry.
Ironically, the Epstein furore might explain why Donald Trump didn’t put in his threatened phone call to Keir Starmer over the weekend to pressure him to intervene in his legal dispute with the BBC over the Panorama tape-splicing blunder. At the time of writing, Trump’s Florida lawyers don’t appear to have yet filed his $1-5 billion lawsuit, raising hopes at the BBC — and no doubt Downing Street — that the president might have listened to those legal experts advising he doesn’t have a case for defamation damages under US law and should settle for the BBC’s humiliating apology. Not least with the BBC and its lawyers rightly defiant about shelling out licence payers’ money to a multi-billionaire president happy to slander his critics whenever it suits him.
But knowing The Donald personally of old, my advice to Auntie and Sir Keir would be: Fingers crossed, but don’t hold your breath!
