An army marches on its stomach and the Blairite New Labour praetorian guard of Keir Starmer’s cabinet meets for breakfast club. Lunch is for wimps and dinners are too often public, so, whispered a snout, Pat McFadden, Wes Streeting, Liz Kendall and Peter Kyle gather in the early morning away from bleary eyes to chew over the state of play. The orange-juice band are tight-knit with a common orientation and interests. No plotting occurs against the Prime Minister, insists our informant, but if Starmer ever looks like he’s toast, expect a united front with the other three backing Streeting. By the way, the Health Secretary is expected by colleagues to go on the chicken run to a much safer roost now Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s new party might make vulnerable Ilford North hostile territory.
Starmer is braced to go through his Highland hell bromance with Trump all over again during September’s state visit. The US president’s green-eyed onetime British bestie Nigel Farage must’ve been one of the few leaders who wished they were in the PM’s shoes for the near 90-minute ordeal in Scotland. “We’re grown-up about the value of Keir’s relationship with the president,” sniffs an aide. There must be an entire book in this for Starmer rather than a mere chapter in future memoirs.
It can be hard to know what to do once you’re no longer PM, as Starmer will discover one day. Tony Blair regularly welcomes furtive groups of Labour MPs to the offices of his think tank. Our snouts have spotted Theresa May in the big Waitrose in Maidstone, picking up essentials while Philip pushes the trolley. David “chillaxing” Cameron continues to enjoy life after Westminster. A personal Instagram post over the weekend showed a shorts-and-polo-shirt-wearing Cameron at the ISPS Handa Senior Open at Sunningdale, Berkshire, with former taoiseach Enda Kenny. Cameron looked almost unbearably happy holding a silver plate after being part of the winning team at the tournament. With a reported net worth of £40m, Cameron may not need any more silver either.
Dubbed Donald Trump’s guy in Silicon Valley before Elon Musk mutated Twitter into X and Mark Zuckerberg turned two-Facedbook, the American tech billionaire Peter Thiel was in town recently and held a private dinner with right-wing worthies. Thiel, waging a war on progressives, was aghast about the state of Britain. He predicted that our economy, being roughly “80 per cent services and 20 per cent manufacturing”, would soon come under even more pressure. AI would ravage the services, and sky-high industrial energy prices would see off what remained of the manufacturing. Did anyone have a good response to Thiel’s challenge around the table? Not according to our snout. He told the British right what it wanted to hear.
Blink-of-an-eye PM Liz Truss notoriously claimed the “jury’s out” on whether French President Emmanuel Macron was a friend or a foe of the UK, and now a similar decision pockmarks the Green Party’s carnivorous leadership bash. Adrian Ramsay couldn’t tell LBC interviewer Iain Dale whether he liked “eco-populist” rival Zack Polanski or not. The MP for Waveney Valley and Green Party co-leader wobbled when asked directly, subsequently clarifying he liked “working with Zack”. Polanski, whose campaign took Ramsay somewhat by surprise, said afterwards that he was “stung” by the hesitation. Having worked with Ramsay for years, Polanski expected better: “I hadn’t realised that Adrian didn’t like me on a personal level.” Always the last to know?
Defeating the Spanish Armada, Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar, Wellington’s at Waterloo, Winston Churchill as the grandson of a Duke, and the creation of the NHS by Clement Attlee, grandfather of a hereditary peer, were all cited in vain by Tory shadow Lords leader, Nicholas True, as reasons to reprieve hereditary bluebloods from the guillotine. “Frankly bonkers stuff,” sniffed a Labour source. Quite.
At last a glint of good news for Kendall: there are fewer vermin under Labour. After this column’s snippet last week on the rodent-infested Mouses of Parliament our eyes alighted on figures recording a fall in pest control call-outs to Jobcentres and other buildings managed by the DWP. The 571 to date this year include one a piece for cockroaches and grey squirrels, 16 for wasps, 93 for birds, and 140 for rats and mice, with unspecified insects topping the bill at 288. Kendall must have shot the Tory fox, with zero cases recorded in 2025 after 13 problems with Mr Tods in recent Conservative times.
The likely formal name of Corbyn and Sultana’s provisionally titled Your Party? She suggested The Left or Left Party. An emphasis on Gaza triggered one Labour hostile to float calling it Jezbollah.
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[See also: The UK to recognise Palestine if there is no ceasefire]
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This article appears in the 30 Jul 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Summer of Discontent