There was a brief window yesterday when Keir Starmer was not the party leader under greatest pressure. The defection of the cerebral Conservative MP Danny Kruger – a former chief speechwriter to David Cameron – to Reform deepened the Tories’ existential crisis. But it did not take long for Starmer’s own woes to resurge.
The resignation of No 10’s director of strategy Paul Ovenden – over sexually explicit messages sent about Diane Abbott in 2017 – may appear less newsworthy than the departures of Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson. But it represents a far more direct blow to Starmer’s embattled operation.
Ovenden, a close ally of Morgan McSweeney, was one of Starmer’s longest-serving aides and respected within Westminster for his sharp political instincts. It was Ovenden who branded Rishi Sunak’s tax attack on Labour a “lie” (compensating for a faltering TV debate performance by Starmer) and who helped inform more than 150 negative stories on the Conservatives during the election as the head of Labour’s attack and rebuttal unit.
“He kept the party grounded during the difficult days of opposition and his fingerprints were on last year’s victory more than most,” a senior Labour source says. Another figure observes: “He’s been a fundamental part of Keir’s leadership from the beginning”, adding of the group that critics, such as Sue Gray, disdained as a “boys’ club”: “It’s only Morgan and Stuart [Ingham] left now”.
Like McSweeney, Ovenden sought to root Labour in a communitarian politics that regarded issues such as border control as fundamental to social democracy rather than antithetical to it. “There were a handful of people in No 10 who instinctively understood the political situation and what the government needed to do, even if they couldn’t get the government to do it. Paul was one of them,” a Blue Labour figure remarks.
There is now a consensus across the spectrum – left, right, centre – that what Starmer has lacked is precisely a political project. “Thatcher was brilliant, she always has her ideology to fall back on,” Tony Benn wrote in his diary following her final House of Commons performance as prime minister. The same was true, to a lesser degree, of Thatcher’s successors. Tony Blair had liberal globalisation and public service reform, Gordon Brown had the crusade against domestic and international poverty and David Cameron had austerity.
What does Starmer have? His defining promise was one of stability and competence – vows now tarnished by a string of U-turns and scandals. Matters might be different if Starmer still looked like a winner, but he looks anything but. His net approval rating is now -54, worse than the nadirs reached by Boris Johnson (-51) and Rishi Sunak (-52). The latest YouGov poll puts Labour on just 20 per cent, nine points behind Reform and only three points ahead of Kemi Badenoch’s becalmed Tories. “Country first, party second” has been the leitmotif of Starmer’s leadership – but the country is turning on him. How do Labour MPs, who were repeatedly told to value “winning” above all else, respond?
There may be no clear successor – as there was when the party ousted Blair – but a rising number inside government believe that Starmer could be forced to depart before Christmas. In the contest that would ensue, one minister predicts this morning: “Angela and Shabana decide who wins”. Does the former deputy leader seek to make a rapid comeback or, more likely, endorse an alternative candidate and does the new Home Secretary back Wes Streeting, the Blairite prince across the water, rather than standing herself?
Here is an insight into the calculations that past Starmer loyalists are now making. The Prime Minister has little time to prove that they need not.
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[See also: Your Party’s existential spat over trans rights]
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