Over for Ovenden

It was in my A-Level Law class over 30 years ago that I learned a valuable lesson for a life in politics. Never write anything down that might compromise you or give your opponents ammunition if they get their hands on it. If only Paul Ovenden, strategy director and late of Keir Starmer's office, had paid this most utterly basic precaution some mind while talking about Diane Abbott in the typically vile manner the Labour right specialise in. Thankfully, what actually was said isn't widely publicised but because of the huge leak of WhatsApp messages at the beginning of Starmer's leadership, we don't have to. It doesn't require much imagination if anyone's paid any attention.

In bis message circulated to journalists, MPs, and other interested hangers on, Ovenden said he was planning on leaving Number 10 anyway, that these texts were a distraction, and he decided to bring his departure forward. I almost cackled with schadenfreude after reading "Having your private messages from nearly a decade ago hacked and then published in an attempt to damage your career is chilling." Quite, but no such scruples were demonstrated by his dear friend Morgan McSweeney when he employed people to trawl through private groups for dirt from which factional ammunition could be manufactured - as admitted by the man himself.

Not wanting to afford Ovenden any credit, at the very least he did the decent thing instead of attempting to brazen it out. But not without some resistance from his friends. Such as the Starmer-friendly journalist Rachel Weirmouth. And this item from Patrick Maguire, in which a "senior government advisor" says "You can tell all you need to know about a leader from who and what they fight for. The prime minister should have taken one look at one of his most skilful and loyal aides and torn up the resignation." It's a mystery who briefed this attack, isn't that right Morgan?

And so, Starmer's "second phase" again lurches from one disaster to the next. Having created together with McSweeney a rigid, authoritarian, and politically narrow project - that has got even narrower following Angela Rayner's resignation and the targeted sackings that came in her wake. In the absence of political disagreements to write about the hacks are going to dig through the bins instead. And because the spads and bureaucrats have no hinterland or legitimacy apart from preferment to fall back on, they're especially vulnerable to exposes of this sort - as Tom Watson, no friend of above-board politics, rightly notes. Full-timers, back office types, and fixers who were featured in 2020's so-called Labour Files had better watch out. As today's Ovenden episode might suggest, the media have noticed this was a thing they accidentally on purpose overlooked then. But now, other racisms, sexisms, and out-of-turn remarks are recalled to memory, ready to embarrass and destabilise the brittle Starmer set up further.