McSweeney created Starmer, now he may be his executioner
Wes Streeting blitzed his prime-time audition, showing MPs what Sir Keir lacks
Keir Starmer’s leadership is expiring. It is only a matter of time as to when and how the UK Prime Minister leaves Number 10 — whether it’s after the tax-raising budget his unpopular and unlikable Chancellor Rachel Reeves hands down at the end of this month or next May, when Labour is expected to be demolished in the council and Welsh elections.
Ironically, it is Starmer’s chief of staff who will be viewed to have started the timer on his execution, having blown open simmering but amorphous leadership chatter that has been taking place amongst Labour MPs for months.
In opposition, strategist Morgan McSweeney masterminded Starmer’s rise, crushing the Labour left with ruthless efficacy, exorcising former leader Jeremy Corbyn and Corbynism.
He took his political hollowman to electoral success with last year’s sweeping but shallow landslide.
But in trying to get ahead of any leadership ructions by briefing out against cabinet members, McSweeney has gone from creator to grim reaper.
The drama began with a briefing to The Times Patrick Maguire by one of Keir Starmer’s ‘closest allies in government’ that accused Wes Streeting, the dynamic Health Secretary, of preparing to launch a leadership bid that allies said the prime minister would fight.
MPs are worried that Mr Starmer, with a net approval rating of minus 48, cannot connect with the public nor arrest Labour’s spectacular freefall in the polls.
But despite the real fear that Starmer is squandering Labour’s huge majority and the populist right-wing party Reform is waiting in the wings, there has been no serious movement on the leadership front, yet.
This is partly because there is no consensus around who could replace Starmer. The only real rival — Streeting — has his fair share of critics who admire his communication skills, but don’t like his style, his Labour-right politics or his confidence.
But all that changed when an ally of the prime minister’s told Maguire this week: ‘Keir knows he is already fighting a leadership contest.’
The attempt to flush out the plotters is a tactic that Number 10 has tried before, and with success. Ahead of the Labour conference, which Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese flew to London and then Liverpool to address, Number 10 successfully threw the popular left-leaning Manchester mayor Andy Burnham into the spotlight.
Under McSweeney and Starmer’s rule, the soft left of the party, from which Burnham hails, has been largely vanquished. But they had started to fight back, with some coalescing around Burnham.
However, they had no intention of making any moves to change the leader until next May. But timing is everything in politics, and Burnham played his hand too early with an ill-advised media interview that generated a frenzy at the conference, for which he was ill-prepared and came off looking like an amateur plotter rather than a leader-in-waiting and on the rise.
Any talk of Labour’s King of the North moving south to Westminster quickly died.
This perhaps explains the attempt to flush out Streeting with the same sort of tactic. But in this instance, it backfired – spectacularly.
A furious Streeting was due to appear on the morning broadcast media rounds. If the intention was to make him squirm on live television and declare loyalty, this failed.
Instead, he launched a likely fatal blow on McSweeney and reminded every MP what Labour could look like with a star communicator at the helm.
‘I think they have been watching too much Celebrity Traitors,’ he said, referring to the cult television show that has gripped the UK.
‘What’s happened to me overnight is the most unjustified attack on a faithful since Joe Marler was banished in the final.’
With the retail pop culture references out of the way, he took the dagger to McSweeney, accusing him of sexism.
‘I’m afraid this sort of briefing is not unknown in politics. In fact I think about some of the cabinet colleagues who have been briefed against — Angela Rayner, Lucy Powell, Bridget Philipson, Lisa Nandy — at least their picking on one of the blokes this time.’
It was a deadly blow.
Streeting was careful to distinguish the Number 10 briefings from Starmer himself.
It made for another improved and steady performance in Prime Minister’s Questions from Opposition Leader Kemi Badenoch.
‘The person responsible for the culture in Number 10 is his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney. Does the Prime Minister have full confidence in him?’ Badenoch inquired.
‘Morgan McSweeney, my team and I are absolutely focused on delivering for the country. Let me be clear: of course I have never authorised attacks on Cabinet members,’ Starmer said, notably not declaring confidence in his chief aide.
Whether McSweeney departs Starmer’s side now or later is almost irrelevant. Starmer can’t survive without him, and both are marked men.
In attempting to out Streeting’s alleged treachery, all Number 10 achieved was providing the prime minister’s rival with a prime time audition slot, which the health secretary not just survived, but blitzed. And in a way, Starmer has never done when under pressure and put on live television.
As one well-placed Labour insider told Latika Takes: ‘If Keir’s plan was to cut Wes off at the legs, it’s spectacularly backfired. Labour MPs have been impressed at how Wes responded and next May will be looking at how to install him as Prime Minister.’
‘This whole episode has just confirmed, beyond any doubt, for lots of Labour MPs that Keir lacks the political skills, acumen and flair to convince the nation that breaking a central manifesto promise is necessary,’ the insider said.
‘The guy is now more unpopular than Corbyn. It’s just a matter of time now.’
Labour has four years to cauterise its self-inflicted bleeding. Replacing a leader, as the Conservatives and both sides of Australian politics well know, is no guarantee of success.
But Starmer, however well-intentioned, is clearly ill-suited to politics and public communication. A Labour MP who thinks Starmer leads them to the next election is a rare if not endangered species.
And this leadership change matters more than most. Labour loves to despair at former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, whose legacy, they say, is losing Europe.
But if left uncorrected, Starmer’s premiership will not be remembered for any achievement but for squandering a huge majority and handing the country to Nigel Farage to lead.
Cameron’s Brexit referendum will look like a misdemeanour in comparison.