The big political fuss in SW1 regarding the leadership of the Labour Party prior to the King’s Speech might have changed in tone but it has not gone away. The quietening down somewhat of the febrile reporting of the situation regarding the Labour leadership represents a stay of execution for Starmer and not a reprieve.
Although the immediate kerfuffle among Labour MP’s and the SW1 commentariat has subsided a little now that Wes Streeting has resigned from the Cabinet, Starmer is still not safe. There’s going to be a by-election soon where Labour’s ‘Great Pretender’ to the leadership throne Andy Burnham is going to stand. If he wins, something that is not entirely a dead certainty in the Makersfield constituency where Josh Simons has stood down so that Burnham can stand, as Reform were in second place with only 6000 votes behind Labour in 2024, then Burnham can challenge Starmer for the leadership. If Burnham doesn’t win then there’s even worse prospects as Labour leader so thin is the political talent pool in the Parliamentary party.
Starmer is safe for the moment but he might not be safe for long. Those plotting to unseat Starmer and who are alarmed at Starmer’s unpopularity and who believe they could do a better job than Starmer haven’t gone away, they are merely biding their time.
When Margaret Thatcher was deposed as leader of the Tories the fall was not instant, the leadership vote did not happen in a vacuum, there was several years of behind the scenes plotting before those opposed to Thatcher in the party had enough ammunition and support. The appearance of a stalking horse candidate against Thatcher in the form of Europhile Sir Anthony Meyer, did not come out of thin air but out of long machinations in the party. There is the whiff of this time and this situation in the long slow demise of Starmer and the plotting against him. Just as the Europhiles had it in for Thatcher so do the Left of Labour have it in for Starmer. However there is a difference between the deposition of Thatcher and the ongoing attempted deposition of Starmer and that’s timescale. Thatcher had to have a disastrous policy failure, the Poll Tax, a major rupture in the party over Europe and a poor public image before she was deposed in a process that took many years to come to its conclusion with the replacement of Margaret Thatcher with Sir John Major. Thatcher’s statement of ‘I fight on, I fight on to win’ came right before her fall. It took a long time to get Thatcher to that point where she thought she could win but had lost the party but it’s taken less than two years for Starmer to be in this position.
Starmer will cling on right up until he cannot do so any more and in the process do great damage to his party and to British politics. If he’s not replaced by Burnham who although he looks to me to be an ambitious chancer might be a more moderate pair of hands to lead Labour then he could be replaced by someone even worse than the present incumbent in the role of Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury. Britain’s government is broken and even with a new leader of the governing party, it is likely to stay broken. Britain’s problems need better governments if these problems are to be resolved in the interests of the British people and I can’t see anyone capable of solving the problems in anybody likely to become Labour leader. However I do see individuals in Labour who might make Britain’s problems worse.