A gloom has settled over the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), and not for the first time this year. After the latest revelations around Peter Mandelson’s appointment as ambassador to the US, consensus has been reached among Labour MPs: this looks terrible for the Prime Minister and for the party. When asked by the New Statesman what the mood in the PLP was, one MP replied “Lol. Bad.”
One sacrifice has already been made. Oliver Robbins – Theresa May’s chief Brexit negotiator and now the former permanent secretary at the Foreign Office – was sacked by the Prime Minister last night. Keir Starmer’s defence over Mandelson’s appointment remains that he wasn’t told by Foreign Office officials that the security services had recommended the Labour peer should not be given the job. But will that be enough to convince his MPs?
Though Labour MPs are united in their opinion of how dire the situation is for the government, there remain a variety of views within the PLP over what could, and should, happen next. Some are holding fire before making an assessment. Starmer will address the Commons on Monday, where he has confirmed he will “set out all the relevant facts in true transparency”.
Some are waiting until then to assess the damage, and many have returned to their constituencies. As one Labour source said, “After Samantha Niblett’s wild week, I think people are just back home.” The MP for South Derbyshire made headlines this week with her call for a “summer of sex”.
Others are looking ahead to the local elections due on 7 May. MPs are apprehensive about losses in strongholds such as London and the north-east, as well as being kicked out of government in Wales. An email from the soft-left group Mainstream sent to its members (and seen by the New Statesman) pledged support for Labour’s candidates in the upcoming elections, arguing that they will face even more of a challenge in May, and encouraged its members to redouble their efforts. The email implied that the wider Labour Party may be forced to pay the price for failings at the top of government.
Will the prospect of such a poor outcome galvanise Starmer’s detractors? One MP said they couldn’t see anyone in the party moving against the Prime Minister before polling day because “it would further damage a weak Labour campaign”. But, they added, “Keir is just a lame duck without authority.” Another MP described the latest revelations as “an irritation, rather than terminal”.
Still, there is always an ongoing Labour leadership contest, even when there isn’t a vacancy. Andy Burnham’s supporters – fresh from a rebrand, as Ethan Croft wrote for the New Statesman this week – are still on manoeuvres. One soft-left source said the revelations of the past few days simply “underscore the undeniable case for Andy”. Though the team around Starmer may have changed since he was elected – Morgan McSweeney being the most high-profile departure – the source argued that if “what comes next isn’t a decisive break then the public won’t listen”. They added: “Who can signal a break better than the guy who hasn’t even been in the building?”
But isn’t that the point? Burnham remains outside parliament after being blocked by Labour’s National Executive Committee from running as the party’s candidate in the Gorton and Denton by-election earlier this year. There is scepticism among the PLP that any of the PM’s possible replacements are ready to challenge. As one Labour source said: “Which of Angela, Wes, Shabana, Lucy or whoever might go for it are ready to run?” Of the two main contenders, Angela Rayner is still waiting for HMRC to sign off her tax affairs, and Wes Streeting’s perceived closeness to Mandelson may cause trouble.
With the difficult local elections fast approaching, this renewed focus on Mandelson’s appointment is unlikely to endear Labour MPs to their leader. Last night the PM tried to woo some of them back by asking the party’s parliamentary private secretaries to text round a personal message from him that laid out the facts. But the seeds of doubt have already been sewn. One MP summed the past 24 hours up quite neatly: “What a shambles.”
[Further reading: The Labour left is scheming]
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