The last time a Labour government was engulfed by leadership melodrama, Jacqui Smith was right in the middle of it. As chief whip at the peak of the Blair-Brown succession saga, Smith was primarily responsible for managing the “challenges between them and those that followed them”. Smith was a useful mediator in the eventual delivery from screaming and stapler-throwing. The then BBC political editor Nick Robinson described Smith as being incredibly effective in “making peace between the warring Blair and Brown factions”.
Today, Smith is adamant: “I don’t think what we have in the Labour Party at the moment is anything like that [situation].” There seems little prospect of any peaceful resolution to the leadership storm Keir Starmer now finds himself in. The Prime Minister is in a precarious position, with Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham – who was blocked from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election by the Starmer-controlled Labour National Executive Committee – waiting to succeed him.
Smith is back in government as Skills and Women and Equalities minister via the House of Lords, having lost her seat in the 2010 election. Does she see any parallels between then and now? Leaning forward on a wingbacked chair inside the blue-hued Department for Education building, she paused for several seconds whilst umming an answer.
“Andy Burnham is no Gordon Brown,” Smith eventually said of her former Cabinet colleague. “People understandably worry about the challenges that we face, whether we’re going quickly enough. [But they] – partly because of what we’ve become used to over the last ten years – are slightly mesmerised by the idea that you can just change leaders and that will somehow solve the problem. When actually we’ve seen that it doesn’t.” Smith thinks it was fair that Burnham was blocked from standing in Gorton and Denton: “I’ve known Andy for a very long time. I’ve heard him say lots of different things. He’s a very good Mayor of Greater Manchester, and that’s what you should be concentrating on.” When I asked whether Burnham would be a good, eventual leader of the party, the answer was abrupt and firm. “No.” Smith quickly added: “He had two goes, remember, to lead the Labour Party, and didn’t win either.”
One outsider for the Labour leadership that seemingly has Smith’s approval is Shabana Mahmood, the Home Secretary. “There is not a vacancy,” said Smith, who in 2007 became Britain’s first female Home Secretary, “but I think [Mahmood]’s doing a bloody good job”.
After our interview in late January, revelations about the relationship between Peter Mandelson and Jeffrey Epstein surfaced. Now it looks as though Starmer’s decision to select Mandelson as his US ambassador could cost him his job. Speaking on the morning broadcast round last September, when the first emails between Mandelson and Epstein came to light, Smith described the messages as “wholly unacceptable, pretty appalling; disgusting, in fact”. In an interview with another broadcaster, she said: “In hindsight, knowing the information that we know now, clearly Peter Mandelson wouldn’t have been selected to be our ambassador.” But at Prime Minister’s Questions on 4 February, Starmer had confirmed that Mandelson’s ongoing relationship with the convicted sex offender “did” appear during the vetting process for the role. When asked about the latest developments regarding her former Cabinet colleague, Smith declined to comment.
After being elected in the constituency of Redditch, Worcestershire at the 1997 general election, Jacqui Smith quickly rose up the ministerial ranks. Over ten years she worked across Education, the whips office and the Home Office. Smith resigned as Home Secretary in 2009 after being caught up in the MP expenses scandal. She was accused of misusing her second home allowance, and her then-husband had also used taxpayers’ money to purchase pornographic films.
Following her exit from parliament, Smith worked with the Jo Cox Foundation, served several NHS trusts, and became a prominent member of the commentariat. Smith was a regular guest on Good Morning Britain and co-hosted a popular podcast with the broadcaster and staunch conservative Ian Dale: “I’m proud that Ian and I were one of the very first political podcasts that had this ‘either side of the political divide’ [dynamic]. Others have made more money out of it since. But we were the OGs.” (A check to Goalhanger, Alastair Campbell, Rory Stewart, Ed Balls and George Osborne may be incoming…) Smith continued: “I had many more experiences talking to people with different political heritages and views during that period, than I ever had as an MP.”
One of those experiences was a particularly chaotic one: on a segment of “Talking Pints” with Nigel Farage in the early, scatty days of GB News in 2022. “I can only apologise that the ice machine broke,” Farage proffered after his opening gambit. “And no lemon either!” Smith joked back, flashing her bare glass, full of a clear liquid, to camera. Was it a vodka-lemonade? Gin and tonic? Water? “Of all the things I remember from that interview, what I was drinking I can’t remember!” Smith told me. Nevertheless, Farage, who at the time was in between stints leading the Reform Party, segued like a veteran broadcaster in their bumbling twilight: “It’s not good. I’m on the Thatcher’s cider because I” – he takes a sip of his pint – “don’t want to be told by the Colston Four what I can and can’t drink. Now…”
Since then, both Smith and Farage have left commentary and returned to politics. Farage’s Reform UK now comfortably leads Smith’s Labour in the polls. What does she make of what Reform and Farage have become? “There’s no doubt that he’s a successful politician,” said Smith. ”But I am under no misapprehension whatsoever that – even had he given me a proper drink – him and his party are not a fundamental danger to the nature of this country.” If it’s so clear that Reform is an existential threat to Britain, why has it been leading the polls for several months? Smith paused. Instead of reflecting on the Labour government’s numerous missteps, the minister projected global trends: “I mean, you know, it’s not only in the UK that that type of populist politics is triumphing… We can see the way in which the uncertainties of the world, [the] propensity of people to feel the change isn’t working for them is what’s driving a cynicism about traditional politics.”
Though Smith relished her time in the commentariat and third sector, “I didn’t think twice about giving it up in order to come back to be a minister.” After 14 years away from parliament, a week before the 2024 election, suddenly, a cold call came. “Sue Gray [Labour’s then-chief of staff] rang me up and said, ‘could I have a chat with you about whether or not you’d be interested in coming back into government?’” Smith formally agreed after a subsequent call with Starmer: “And for the first time ever in my ministerial career I had some choice about what I did, and I chose this job.” What were the other choices? “Not gonna tell you!” Smith jokingly growled (though she did admit it was in departments different from her current one). Having come from a “family of teachers” – Smith herself taught economics and business studies before entering parliament – it felt natural to rejoin the education department. “Everything about my life that has been positive and fulfilling has depended… on an education.”
The educational system that had opened many opportunities for Smith – who studied philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University in the Eighties – is now stifling the young people of today. The planned freezing of the repayment threshold for Plan Two student loans from 2027 – alongside the dual forces of high inflation and interest rates in recent years – has been dubbed an “intergenerational unfairness” and a “national scandal”. Martin Lewis suggested that those with Plan Two loans should write to their MP: “Say, ‘This isn’t on!… We got a contract with you and you’re unilaterally changing the terms!’” I pondered whether Smith understood why many graduates may feel like the government is changing the terms and conditions of their loans. “No,” she interrupted before I finished my question, “there’s not a changing of the terms and conditions of Plan Two loans. There is simply not, for a couple of years, an uprating of the threshold.”
Even though those who took out Plan Two loans were told that the repayment threshold would rise in line with average earnings, Smith is adamant that “those who benefit from the [university] system need to make a contribution to the system”. Many of the 3.9 million Plan Two loan borrowers in England may feel like that aren’t benefitting from the system as implied. The average graduate, for example, will repay £8,000 more as a result of the threshold freeze, with the lowest earners having their lifetime repayments increasing by 68 per cent. Over 700,000 graduates are out of work and claiming welfare. The most common living arrangement for young people used to be in a couple with one or more children; it is now the Hotel of Mum and Dad. The reality for many, I tell Smith, is bleak. But she holds the government line. “Listen – I can completely understand why people look [negatively] at their student loan arrangements… [But] you are still much better off having gone to university than not gone to university.”
It has been a long career of confronting political drama, whether by direct intervention from the middle of Westminster politics or by opining from the perches of commentary. But under the swirl of party leadership debates, Reform, Mandelson, and student loans, Smith appears to have found peace in silence. I asked her to predict, as both a minister and a former commentator, where the future may take Labour. She laughed back at me: “No – I don’t do that [anymore]!”
She continued: “When I was in the commentariat, I would have spent a whole podcast talking about all of that stuff. And I would have enjoyed it – and I would have felt I was contributing something to the understanding of politics. And, I would have changed absolutely nothing.” The skills minister has an enormous brief: Britain’s workforce routinely ranks low among OECD countries for qualifications and preparedness for work.
Smith appears determined to let her actions do the talking. “I have the opportunity as part of a Labour government to actually change people’s lives; part of doing that means that I focus on the job. I work with my colleagues, I avoid the gossip and the speculation, and I get on with doing that.”
Would she be willing to get on with the job under any Labour leader? Even Burnham? “Well, assuming I don’t get sacked: yes!”
[Further reading: Pedro Sánchez: Europe’s left-wing icon]
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