This is the worst 24 hours of Keir Starmer's leadership! Or, as the Simpson's meme has it, this is the worst 24 hours of Keir Starmer's leadership so far. The day didn't start great for the Prime Minister. Still reeling from Sunday's departure of our chum Morgan McSweeney, from out of nowhere the head of the dire Downing Street press operation, Tim Allan, threw in the towel. Whether this had something to do with weak vetting, who can say. He once handled press in this country for one Vladimir Putin, so perhaps it's merely a coincidence. Things carried on looking shaky for Starmer, before Anas Sarwar lobbed a bomb from afar. The Scottish Labour leader was calling a press conference to tell the PM to pack his bags. It looked like curtains, especially as rumours swirled that the Welsh First Minister, Eluned Morgan, was set to follow. Matters were uncertain.
Until they weren't. She denied reports, and then cabinet member after cabinet member came out to offer Starmer their backing. It ranged from a lukewarm "he doesn't need to resign" from Wes Streeting to the usual boilerplate from everyone else. You know, "he led us to a landslide victory", and "change takes a long time!", and "we have wonderful new breakfast clubs". Writing at the end of the day, it appears that Starmer survives. For now.
Ironically, this position of precarity confers on him a new reason for living. For Sarwar, calling for Starmer's head is calculated to salvage Scottish Labour's chances before this May's Holyrood elections. He's hoping that some oppositional cache will fall to his crew. I'm not so sure. After all, the few dozen Labour MPs who splashed their support for Brexit across their 2019 literature found it didn't save them. And the fact Starmer dumped Richard Leonard out of office so Sarwar could take over. Few other-party-curious Scottish Labour voters are likely to forget this, and will see it as cynical politicking. Something the SNP will no doubt remind punters of at every opportunity.
For the rest of the party, it's in no would-be leader's interest for Starmer to go. Wes Streeting has decided not to wait for the humble address and released his batch of toe curling messages between him and former best pal, Peter Mandelson. Likewise, Angela Rayner, who saved the government from an embarrassing Commons defeat last Wednesday, has to wait for the HMRC to give her "controversial" tax affairs a clean bill of health. And even those not immediately in the frame need someone to carry the can for the battering due at the Denton and Gorton by-election, and the May local and devolved elections. No new leader can afford to start their premiership with two crushing defeats.
Therefore, Starmer has use again. For Mandelson, via McSweeney, he was the marionette that would win the party back from the membership. He was then the empty suit animated almost entirely by oligarchical interests. And now that his days are numbered and the Labour right have suffered an historic embarrassment, he remains the tool of others, a meat shield whose sole purpose is to take the electoral beating coming the government's way. And when that's done, with Starmer lying bleeding and broken on the floor, that's when the up-and-comers will step over his body. Perhaps one of them will be kind enough to roll him into a ditch, but most are likely to not linger at the scene lest the miasma of poor judgement and failure clings to them.
11 comments:
So, to turn that prediction from florid metaphor to blandly concrete expectations... Starmer stays in post until the coming electoral defeats are done with, then falls on his sword, right? He stays on as caretaker PM - or gives us a parting middle finger by passing that honour to the most odious character that he can find within arms' reach - whilst the starting pistol is fired to replace him.
And then things get less predictable again...
So now we will see the adults in the room start their manoeuvers and field campaigning for leadership. We can expect some of them to dig out their old leftist rhetoric to seek the support of the membership - though not too left since they also need to win the support of the Mc Sweeney Fusiliers elected in 2024.
It has been an education to see how adults in the room do behave and how they seek to portray it as 'honourable' and 'decent'. You need to remind yourself that it is hardly honourable to lie to your members to become leader or decent to treat people like Diane Abbot as they did, or either to appoint Mandelson to Ambassador when you must have intelligence and screening from security services .
Incidently, I wonder how much Mc Sweeny's departure was due, not to honour and decency, but the forthcoming release of e mails between the 'adults' and dear Peter.
Starting pistol already well and truly fired, as it turns out. Who the hell is Alistair Carns...? Somebody with media connections wants everyone to know.
Under past circumstances he'd be the token leadership rival to the already pre-ordained successor. Under present circumstances, where the pre-ordainers are desperately scrambling for someone (who is relatively uncompromised in public) to be their puppet, he might even be the pre-ordained successor.
Do you mean Marine Commando Colonel Carns MC - a man who could kill you with his bare hands? Handy for in party fighting in the LP, though most prefer either a stilleto or a bludgen.
Difficult to tell from his short Wikipedia entry what Colonel Carns politics are, but presumably suitably Right Wing militarist Labour , or Mandelson wouldn't have OK'd him as shoo in MP for the utterly safe Labour seat of Selly Oak in 2024. He obviously killed a lot of Afghanis to gain his top class medals . And yet the US coalition forces still lost the war, despite his performance. Not quite sure how that area of experience will help in Selly Oak, or as PM though.
His " personal life" entry in Wikipedia is solely that he summited Mount Everest last year with a team of Marines to test breathing apparatus ! If its to be a bare knuckle Leadership fight between him and Wes Streeting I want a first row seat !
Nobody could seriously imagine Starmer ending up bleeding and broken on the floor, could they? Maybe a bit bruised as he makes his way to whatever cushy job is being lined up for him, but otherwise surely just wishful thinking on your part, Phil.
A about as much point as the Labour Party.
I wonder if that guy is close to the affair in which former Afghan special forces were (allegedly) refused asylum for spurious reasons, in order to prevent them from being available to give evidence at an ongoing enquiry into war crimes committed by British special forces... With the decision to deny them having apparently been made by a guy who was a direct underling of the now First Sea Lord... And many of those former Afghani special forces having since then been killed and/or mutilated by the Taliban.
It seems that the PMship revolving door is now the norm, not the exception. Politics is all about manoeuvring for the top spot, but lately with little regard as to what you do when you have it. This has become increasingly obvious with each incumbent.
The first PM I recall who had spent so much time and effort on getting the role that he had no idea what to do when he did, was Gordon Brown. After him it became a procession that gradually picked up speed. The underlying cause of this lack of "vision" is the failure of the dominant economic ideology (neoliberalism) that manifested in the financial crash of 2007/8. Since then, those in power have been running on empty, with no ideas other than variations of austerity.
As each attempt predictably fails, the next relaunch comes along. Brexit allowed them to hide their lack of solutions behind some sloganeering and gestures at outside forces as being the problem. This too led nowhere. Or rather, it made things worse, so now we move towards the hard times classic playbook - fascism or war. Or both.
Labour's problem is that they are just as wedded to neoliberal dogma as the Tories, but not as credible as fascists as Reform.
What seems to us as the obvious move away from neoliberalism and into some sort of neo-socialism is blocked by their own prejudices and the fact the current clique in charge are there because of their bias against the left (there is also the matter of unchained global finance ready to use the concentrated wealth neoliberalism delivered up to it to bring down anyone who threatens its dominance). Which leaves them with nowehere to go, no ideas, and no future.
Unfortunately, it also leaves the country rudderless at a time when we really need someone to steer a careful course, away from the shadowy rocks of monopoly capital, out from the threatening storm clouds of fascism, into sunnier waters - if any can be found.
Lil' what-if.
What if, freed finally from Mandelson and McSweeney, Starmer starts suddenly doing the right things (whether for the right reasons or not)? In other words, what if the problem was really concentrated in their malevolent beings all along - and with them gone, Starmer's position becomes worth saving?
Even with the coming electoral humiliations, it's arguably within his power to save it.
Reform are not really the threat to Labour, because for the things that Reform do well - basically, appealing to the racist and/or fascist instincts of simpletons - Labour simply cannot ever compete. Therefore, those votes are Reform votes. Labour lives or dies now depending upon whether or not it can get the votes from the modern left, comprising all the people who despise both Reform and the "Reform-lite" political suicide of McSweeney.
Therefore, their real rivals are the Green Party. And the path to salvation for both Starmer and Labour is to avoid the splitting of the left vote. At this point, McSweeney has probably done so much irreparable damage to the Labour vote that it won't be enough simply to start being more palatable whilst hoping to convince people to vote Labour rather than Green. The necessity for an electoral pact beckons; and if Starmerite Labour really has it within itself to turn over a new leaf in order to save itself from annihilation, then an electoral pact also becomes possible.
This does not bode well for Starmer...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn0zjw5pz48o mm mm
Post a Comment