When the late Labour grandee Robin Cook changed the sitting hours of the House of Commons, he imagined he was creating a modern legislature – one that would allow parliamentarians to spend freed-up evenings and weekends with their family, friends and constituents. Instead, they croon pop songs in seedy London bars a few miles from Westminster. Well, not all of the time. But the secret MPs’ karaoke club has become a near-weekly ritual in this parliament for Labour MPs, and some ministers, too. (First rule: don’t talk about karaoke club. Second rule: no journalists allowed.)
They sing, get drunk and bond over how grim it all is. Every indicator we currently have says that Labour is on course to lose the next election, no matter how far away it might be. The Budget is expected to bring bad news and political pain. As a shorthand for discontent, some MPs have taken to texting each other the turd emoji in response to disappointing developments – a reminder of the youth of this Parliamentary Labour Party, which is full of people who really don’t want their parliamentary careers to be over before they’re even staring down the barrel of a 40th birthday party.
While he hasn’t quite been reading Dale Carnegie for tips, the Prime Minister has realised that you have to win (back) friends if you want to influence people. And so there is a more determined effort to bring the Labour family together. A No 10 source describes this to me as “smoothing the waters” before the Budget.
First, there is the softly-softly approach of the new chief whip, Jonathan Reynolds. One MP describes him as “amiable and personable” when compared with his veteran predecessor, Alan Campbell. As soon as parliament returned from the conference recess, Reynolds summoned suspended welfare rebel MPs for cups of tea and polite conversations about their future. All are likely to get the whip back soon.
Then there is the bigger question of the ex-ministers, that swelling caucus of people who have left government, including the 15 who were sacked in the September reshuffle. (It is received wisdom that the more people a prime minister sacks from government, the more enemies they create: Tony Blair rightly hated sacking people and didn’t relish reshuffles.) Several of them received personal letters from Keir Starmer in the weeks after the reshuffle. The sentiment was nice, but the missives did not explain his decision to fire them. Like every person who has just been dumped, it’s the first question they wanted answered.
Now, the charm offensive has ramped up, with No 10’s new political secretary, Amy Richards, among the figures from the centre extending the hand of friendship.
Some have been told they can keep themselves useful by working on projects with Labour Together, the government-aligned think tank, or running for various select committee vacancies. These are ways of diluting the piss and vinegar of the rejects.
Others remain unbiddable. One, who was once a prominent figure in the Starmer firmament, and was snubbed in September, told me that they have “no interest” in engaging with No 10 and imagine their political future will be under a different Labour leader. Another said: “I have started to give up on him.”
An atmosphere of giving up on the Prime Minister is dangerous and is not limited to the also-rans. There is cabinet-level discontent with the PM for apparently slowing down just as momentum was beginning to build. There was that confidently delivered conference speech in which he seemed to pivot to a new approach – with little, so far, to follow up. There was the bold announcement of a digital ID policy. But it hasn’t led a news bulletin or touched a front page in weeks. As an example of how slow and stuttering does not win the race, one cabinet minister wonders, bemused, why it took Starmer a week to decide the Farage deportations plan was morally wrong.
Even among the Starmer lifers, such as they are, there is discontent. This was made apparent on 20 October when Neil Kinnock criticised a lack of “basic political skills” at the top. It was significant because Kinnock is not some party fossil carping from the silt (the dismissal that Jack Straw, David Blunkett and others tend to get). He has known Starmer for nearly 20 years, has been an enthusiastic supporter of his leadership, and was a neighbour and constituent before the Prime Minister moved from Camden to Westminster. And he wasn’t just speaking for himself.
Despite so recently winning a historic victory, Starmer has found his circle of friends has been shrinking, to the point where his longest-serving staffer – and talented newbie MP – Chris Ward made his first outing at the dispatch box to face the Tory barrage over the China spy scandal. The decision to put up Ward was harshly described to me by one plugged-in Labour source as “late-stage government behaviour”, when there is a short supply of trustworthy and ambitious allies who are willing to take a beating for the boss.
But in the run-up to the Budget there will be more efforts at peace and reconciliation from No 10. Starmer himself even deigned to have lunch in the Members’ dining room of the Commons in mid October. Just don’t expect to see the PM at karaoke club any time soon singing, like his beloved Orange Juice, that it’s time to “rip it up and start again”.
[Further reading: I thought Labour would fix everything. I was wrong]
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This article appears in the 23 Oct 2025 issue of the New Statesman, Doom Loop