Keir Starmer’s silver lining

The PM has been saved from the brink of peril

Illustration by André Carrilho

At the end of a very long day, Keir Starmer’s aides piled into parliament’s Strangers’ Bar and allowed themselves a drink. A few hours before, their boss’s job had been in the gravest danger since his leadership began. Even some of the Prime Minister’s closest allies had privately concluded it was the end. But by 8pm or so, his position was, astonishingly, safe. For now. No 10’s advisers raised a glass and breathed a sigh of relief.

What a 48 hours it had been. Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s chief of staff and strategist, had resigned the previous day, 8 February, taking “full responsibility” for his advice over the appointment of Peter Mandelson. The following morning, 9 February, Tim Allan, Starmer’s director of communications, also announced he was leaving. Then Anas Sarwar, the Scottish Labour leader, called for Starmer to resign in a televised press conference.

It could have been the end for the Prime Minister. But what remained of his team shifted into gear. Amy Richards, his political director, and a handful of others began ringing cabinet ministers, urging them to post their support, and to do it urgently. Ironically, it was the sort of ring-round operation that Mandelson had organised for Gordon Brown in 2009 after the attempted putsch by James Purnell. Within an hour, the entire cabinet had rowed in behind the PM. Ministers and backbenchers declared their support too. The coup was over before it had properly begun.

The Labour Party had stared over the precipice and decided now was not the time to jump. “What on Earth just happened?” one government figure messaged in the afternoon of 9 February, after the full sweep of cabinet endorsements, as they emerged blinking into the sun.

It was no secret that Sarwar had been feeling increasingly frustrated with Starmer’s government. From Gaza to the winter fuel payment to the decision in September to defend Mandelson’s appointment at Prime Minister’s Questions, the Scottish Labour leader’s grievances with the Starmer operation have been mounting. “We’ve been unable to sell our achievements, while the government is loudly tripping over itself,” a Sarwar ally says. His hopes of becoming Scotland’s first minister this year have been receding as Labour plunges in the national opinion polls – caused, even Westminster Labour figures concede, by Starmer rather than Sarwar. One former No 10 aide to Starmer even says Sarwar is “as close to a perfect politician you can get”. The Scottish Labour leader had already tried to distance himself from the national Labour brand. But only on the Monday, the day of the press conference, did he decide he would go further and call for Starmer to go.

Sarwar didn’t see his intervention through the prism of Westminster, but of Holyrood. It was about showing the Scottish people he could be frank about a Westminster government with an approval rating in Scotland of around 10 per cent. “He can’t go to the people of Scotland and ask to be elected first minister if he doesn’t have the guts to be honest,” an ally says.

To many of his colleagues in Westminster, Sarwar’s intervention looked like “a very weak coup attempt”. “Surely Anas wouldn’t have done that without some sort of encouragement from at least one leadership camp,” one insider observes. Wes Streeting’s team and Sarwar’s have denied any coordination. An ally of Sarwar describes the suggestion as “utter pish”, blaming No 10. “It speaks to the political sickness that will end Keir’s tenure,” they say, adding: “Instead of facing up to the reality in the country, their response is to play Westminster parlour games and see monsters under the bed.”

Sarwar had spoken to Streeting in the preceding days, about growing unease inside the cabinet and the Parliamentary Labour Party, their struggles in the country and the fallout from the Mandelson scandal. But he had had similar conversations with “half the cabinet”, an ally says, as well as Angela Rayner and Lucy Powell. Sarwar didn’t discuss his intervention with any of them. In fact, Sarwar’s allies reckon “Wes is going to bottle the whole thing”.

In London, Sarwar’s intervention is seen by Starmer’s allies as a paradoxical blessing. “It flushed the threat out,” a cabinet minister says, describing it as a “put up or shut up moment” that ultimately clarified the lack of appetite for a leadership contest. Streeting and Rayner, the two most likely contenders to replace Starmer, are not ready for a contest. “Ironically, the circumstances of this difficulty for Keir also make it harder for others to challenge him: Wes on Mandelson, Ange on ethics,” a Starmer ally says. Others who might fancy a tilt at the top job don’t want to be seen to wield the knife. Ultimately, challengers decided they weren’t ready, and the rest of the Labour Party, from the cabinet to backbenchers, decided they didn’t want to plunge in without a plan.

Labour is divided on whether this will be a permanent state of affairs. “Nothing has changed. It’s a stay of execution,” one insider argues. The Gorton and Denton by-election later this month, and then the Scottish, Welsh and English local elections in May, will still be difficult. But others hope the consensus holds that Labour won’t fix its problems by changing leader. Certainly, Starmer has bought himself time.

It will be a source of genuine disappointment to many Labour people that the beginning of this column, and much of the commentary in the days after McSweeney’s resignation, has retreated to the subjects that Westminster enjoys best: who’s up, who’s down? Did Anas do a deal with Wes? How did the ring-round to save Keir work? Will he survive as Prime Minister? Because the truth is that something far more serious has been going on. The appointment of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador and the fallout has unlocked a heavy, weary discussion about misogyny, money and standards in public life. Many Labour people don’t want a leadership challenge, but they do want this to be a moment of reckoning with how things can be done better – which could be even more confronting for Starmer.

A former senior No 10 aide to Starmer rang me as the Mandelson story was unfolding and said she had never felt so disillusioned with Westminster, including her former colleagues. “The truth is that too many men turn a blind eye to sexism, bullying or bad behaviour when it’s within their own faction, their own tribe, or one of their mates.” And yes, she did say men. She reeled off countless other recent examples, from the figure who attended a Westminster party the night before he was charged with rape – an investigation everyone knew to be ongoing – to other appointments that have been made within government despite concerns being flagged. Matthew Doyle, who was made a Labour peer despite Downing Street reportedly being aware he had campaigned for a paedophile, has now had the whip removed and colleagues call on Starmer to remove his peerage.

Another Labour MP describes a feeling of “apoplectic rage” among the party’s women, many of whom see the Mandelson appointment as one, fundamentally, of misogyny: of failing to think about what being the friend of a paedophile and sex trafficker meant, what crimes would have been overlooked, what the women and girls in Epstein’s orbit must have experienced. Many Labour women have spent years condemning a “boys’ club culture” in No 10 – a charge that has been dismissed by Downing Street insiders, who name as evidence the women who work in the building in senior positions. Even as women in the cabinet found themselves disproportionately briefed against, or sex pests were inexplicably elevated to senior positions, No 10 never asked itself if its critics had a point.

Only a taste of Labour women’s rage is being expressed in public. “It’s our culture that doesn’t properly hear women which meant Peter Mandelson’s power lasted for so long,” wrote loyal minister Alison McGovern on 10 February. She doesn’t criticise the Prime Minister or his aides, but calls for change to a culture in which women may have the right to vote or stand in elections, but haven’t necessarily been “granted equal power round the cabinet table, or equal say on what advisers do”.

We are entering a new phase of Starmer’s premiership. He is fighting for survival. For the first time, we will see who he is without Morgan McSweeney, the strategist who has been by his side since before he was even elected Labour leader. “We’ll be able to see Keir follow his own instincts,” one Starmer ally says hopefully. Vidhya Alakeson and Jill Cuthbertson, his new deputy chiefs of staff, will support that, in the view of one ally: “Jill in particular has always been of a ‘let Keir be Keir’ mindset”. Louise Casey, the troubleshooter so often called on by prime ministers to address knotty or sensitive institutional problems, has also been a more frequent sight inside No 10 in recent days.

Starmer is changing. On the evening of 9 February, he gave the performance of his premiership in front of a packed, boiling-hot room of Labour MPs, peers and staff. He told them he was sincerely angry with himself for the Mandelson decision, in the “best” and “angriest” speech even sceptical colleagues have seen from him. Those who know him speak about his deep and sincere commitment to tackling violence against women and girls, and his mortification that his decision appeared to indicate the opposite. He told colleagues that his operation “has not been open or inclusive enough”, and that he wanted to give “proper weight” to the views in that room. That effort began before McSweeney left. But now Labour MPs are starting to believe it. In this new phase, perhaps the endgame of Keir Starmer’s premiership, a sliver of hope remains. Labour is clamouring for a culture change on gender, class, money and standards in public life – and the more inclusive approach that he has promised. He has pledged to meet their expectations. If he does not, Starmer will have no McSweeney to take the blame.

[Further reading: How Keir Starmer survives]