So, she went. All Westminster had been wondering whether Anneliese Dodds, the international development minister, would resign over Keir Starmer’s decision to fund higher defence spending by cutting overseas aid (as I suggested she may on the New Statesman podcast).
Yesterday, I was assured by an Anneliese-friendly cabinet minister that she wouldn’t. Dodds is one of the most reasonable, loyal, unshowy of politicians. She faithfully accepted her demotion from the job of shadow chancellor in 2021 and since then she had been a “just-get-on-with-it” slogger for the Labour cause. Not now.
Aid matters viscerally and emotionally to the Labour tribe and she could – if she chose – begin something really dangerous on the Labour benches for the Prime Minister. But even now, I don’t see her as the back-bench leader of a wider soft-left revolt.
Yet Dodds’ resignation sharpens the coming battle between Starmer Central and the soft left, identified by the New Statesman as the consequence of this government’s “Reformation”, and by my colleague George Eaton as the revival of the old Labour right.
This is not going to be a confrontation between the left, as we have always understood it in Labour terms, and the cabinet; but rather, between leftish social democrats who have been intertwined with the Starmer project, and the forthright push for a Labour populism to repel Reform.
It will be fought this spring over all the obvious issues – welfare reform, tighter immigration policy, the future of the aid budget and education. There is, I fear, a mighty clash coming over spending cuts in unprotected departments by Easter (Dodds’ resignation letter pointedly states: “I also expected we would collectively discuss our fiscal rules and approach to taxation”).
Starmer, after a generally celebrated summit with Donald Trump, will reflect that no political triumph lasts very long. Only the very greatest politicians can genuinely “make the political weather” and in the context of the conservative revolution led by the White House, the practical power of UK diplomacy was always going to be limited. But on tariffs, on some kind of US backstop in Ukraine and on the Chagos deal, Starmer at least showed himself an effective manufacturer of umbrellas.
He returns to London ahead of a major gathering of EU leaders as a British politician who has been a surprisingly effective advocate for Ukraine – although we cannot really assess this until after the Trump-Zelensky summit today. In personal status, he returns bigger and stronger than when he left.
So, the next question had to be how he would use this increased authority. There are obvious crunch points around spending, the growth agenda, and net zero. The future of the Rosebank and Jackdaw oil and gas fields can’t be ignored for much longer. (How is Ed Miliband feeling today?)
But at a time when even Daily Telegraph writers describe this as one of the most right-wing governments of modern times, Starmer has to find a way of convincing his party there is still a genuine left-of-centre personality lurking somewhere inside it. And he will turn, surely, to Angela Rayner just as Tony Blair used to turn to John Prescott.
That in itself would be a good thing because there has been too much whispering against senior female cabinet ministers recently – Bridget Phillipson, Lisa Nandy and even Rachel Reeves. Some of the briefing has nothing to do with sexism and everything to do with politics but with Louise Haigh and now Anneliese Dodds on the backbenches, this is a potentially toxic narrative No 10 has to watch very closely. Welcome home, Keir!
[See also: Was Keir Starmer’s Trump meeting really a triumph?]
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