No one has ever really loved Keir Starmer as Labour leader, but that was kind of the point. People had felt altogether too much about Jeremy Corbyn in one way or another and were fed up of the giddy, headrush politics of the Brexit years. Starmer got the job as a candidate of factional moderation, and as the Prime Minister was going to have politics “tread more lightly” on people’s lives. You were meant to think he was fine, and that someone who was fine and could win an election for Labour was more than acceptable.
Within Labour, however, it is my strong impression that Starmer ran out of road with “fine” quite some time ago. At some point in the benighted first year of this government, most people’s opinions floated down to “rubbish”. When there’s no Starmerism and everyone, at best, thought you were a good means to an end, you have no convincing ultras to fight for your reputation – just people fighting to claim the blank space.
But since Angela Rayner resigned two weeks ago, things have changed. Starmer has lost his deputy, and stories about his judgement following the release of details about Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein continue to swirl. It feels like we are now travelling the distance between the received opinion being “rubbish” and being “untenable”.
In the period between Starmer’s initial defence of Mandelson and the ambassador being sacked, the door opened to unviability, to the political floor dropping away beneath Downing Street, to people cracking out the Labour Party rulebook to work out what is needed to start a leadership challenge. As it transpired, it was a matter of hours.
Labour people had already been working their factional muscles in the first stage of the deputy leadership race (backbiting: it’s moreish). If the door opens once, it will open again, and each time it will take less for it to do so. The government’s initial response – cabinet minister Peter Kyle, out on the airwaves talking about free speech being “alive and well” – to 100,000 Tommy Robinson supporters on the streets of London was enough to open it again.
Paul Ovenden’s departure from No 10 would have been damaging a month ago, but it would not have gotten the coverage it has now that it fits into a broader context of chaos for the leadership. (Chaos at the top being the thing this Labour Party hammered the previous Tory government on, to great effect.) One hears much of the phrase “shuffling deckchairs”. Clive Lewis has called for Starmer to go; Rosena Allin-Khan has said the May elections will be a test of whether people think he is “up to the job”. These MPs are outliers, but they are not suggestive of a positive momentum and goodwill towards the leadership. Lobbying firms are telling their clients that “the sense that Starmer’s judgment is fundamentally flawed is now widespread”.
The continuity pick for deputy leadership, Bridget Phillipson is underwater in polls of members. (In my view, Phillipson is probably the best available pro-leadership candidate, an Education Secretary doing the kind of private-school-taxing, academy-critical work that members like, raising some hackles on the Labour right while she was at it.) Reports about an Andy Burnham leadership campaign are increasingly serious, losing their old gauzy quality. Eighty MPs is only a high nomination threshold from certain angles.
In the classic MR James adaptation Night of the Demon, a magician named Karswell gives those who cross him papers marked with runes, damning them to be taken by a demon at an appointed hour. Eventually, Karswell is tricked and falls under his own curse. In the film’s final scenes he runs frantically, and fruitlessly, down the train tracks away from the creature he’s summoned. In recent weeks, the strange metallic period of continual disaster, I imagine Keir Starmer must feel a little like Karswell at the end of the film. Only instead of a demon approaching to draw things to a close, it’s probably a by-election in the greater Manchester area, with a fizzing cloud of Andy Burnham on the horizon. The feeling in the party seems to be that if it isn’t that, it will be something else.
It is smart, as a political commentator, to do some hedging, and it’s true that the future is unknowable. Starmer has had a functional few days, and Trump’s state visit went smoothly enough. For now, the door to doom is closed. Maybe the appointed hour does not draw near; maybe there’s plenty of Starmer to go. People survive all kinds of things, and the fear of being seen as chaotic combined with the lack of a logistically smooth successor may prove enough to keep Starmer in place. With Labour polling at 14 per cent in Wales (less than half Reform’s performance), the results of the 2026 local elections are not entirely unforeseeable. In fact, it’s possible to see that any pretenders will want to keep Starmer about until then and have him own the results. What is certain is that after this period, Starmer will be as weak as he has ever been.
[See also: Was Your Party doomed to fail?]
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