As a chronicler of Tony Blair’s government, I found the “authority draining away” theme irritating. Mainly because I didn’t want it to be true. Even though it was obvious when Blair announced in 2004 that he would not fight the election after next that it would become harder for him to get people to do what he wanted them to do.
But that was after he had been prime minister for seven years. It allowed him to fend off Gordon Brown for another three years, and win an election – and he still succeeded in intensifying his reform programme of academy schools and NHS choice.
Keir Starmer has hit the “authority draining away” stage rather early. “Sir Keir Starmer is rapidly losing his authority,” said The Economist in July, when a threatened rebellion by Labour MPs forced him to gut a bill to cut disability benefits. “The PM’s authority has been given a kick,” agreed Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC.
Last month Reuters reported, “UK PM Starmer’s authority shaken as rift with Labour lawmakers deepens,” when someone briefed journalists on his behalf that he would stand and fight any challenge to his leadership. And on and on.
That briefing, intended to put an end to leadership speculation, only made it worse. Today alone The Telegraph leads its front page with allies of Wes Streeting proposing a joint leadership ticket with Angela Rayner, while The Times reports that Blair himself is “frustrated” with Starmer and is “looking closely at each of the leadership campaigns”.
Nor are these headlines mere froth, even if they were stirred so counterproductively by Starmer himself, or by people acting on his behalf. I do not think it is a good idea for Labour MPs to be contemplating changing their leader at this stage, but I cannot deny that is precisely what they are doing.
I share Blair’s alleged view that last week’s Budget “killed any idea this is a Blairite or New Labour-like government”, as reported by The Times, but I assume that any government led by Starmer’s replacement would be even less so. Unless Starmer is replaced by Wes Streeting, which seems unlikely, given the views of the Labour Party members who would make the choice.
There is, incidentally, a strange report of a YouGov poll of Labour members, also in The Times (two Labour leadership speculation articles in one day!), the headline of which suggests that Ed Miliband is the members’ choice to succeed Starmer. This is not correct. What the poll shows is that Miliband has the highest approval rating of possible candidates, but approval is not the same as wanting someone to be prime minister, and Angela Rayner does not seem to have been included in the poll. When a Survation poll asked Labour members last month to choose between Starmer and possible rivals as leader, Rayner was the clear winner. Miliband was preferred to Starmer, but by less than the margin of error.
These are just kneejerk polls, and the way a leadership election would play out is hard to predict. Streeting is not as unpopular with party members as might be expected for a Blairite, and he polls better than Rayner among the wider electorate, which will be a factor.
But his prospects are uncertain at best, hence recent reports that his supporters want him to be elected unopposed (no chance) and today’s report that they want to do a deal with Rayner, restoring her as deputy prime minister and offering her a choice of department. Why should she agree to that if she has a good chance of the top job herself?
So, no, I do not think a change of leadership is a good idea. I admire Rayner but I do not think she should be prime minister.
And yet a change of prime minister is increasingly likely to happen. The more people expect it to happen, the more Starmer’s authority drains away, and the more people expect it to happen.
As this cycle intensifies, it becomes ever clearer that Starmer doesn’t have the skills needed to break out of it. This is not my view, but that of Peter Hyman, who worked for him in opposition and who devised the “five missions”. Hyman wrote this week that Starmer is stuck in the “winning strategy” of “working hard, getting on with it, a single-minded focus on the task ahead” that got him to be prime minister, and that it will be hard for him to change.
Hyman argues that Starmer needs to become “an explainer, a story teller, to give the British people the confidence that comes from a sense of purpose and direction”. Simply to write it down is enough to know that it is not going to happen.
The prime minister is going to find it harder and harder to do anything that Labour MPs find difficult. This week he tiptoed closer to the EU and spent money on alleviating child poverty. Those are things that Labour MPs want him to do, and yet they are still talking endlessly about getting rid of him.
I still do not like the phrase, but it cannot be denied that the prime minister’s authority, and therefore his power, is draining away.
