There is one thing Labour can do to stop the rot – but will they do it? Tom Watson, the former junior minister who helped topple Tony Blair, hit the nail on the head when he urged Labour MPs to stop plotting to remove Keir Starmer. He is right, of course – but can anything be done to shut down the damaging leadership chatter, asks John Rentoul.
The Curse of Leadership Speculation
I realise that I am now about to add to the leadership speculation that is so damaging to Keir Starmer and the Labour Party, but Tom Watson, the former deputy leader, started it. He has pleaded with Labour MPs not to do what he did in 2006, which was to sign a letter to the leader asking him to set a timetable for his departure. “I would tell them not to be as reckless as we were in 2006. Experience is what you get just after you need it most,” he wrote. “Whatever the rights and wrongs of Labour’s current woes, the answer is not two-dozen backbench MPs writing a public letter calling on the prime minister to resign.”
He was writing in response to a newspaper report yesterday that such a device, modelled on his ultimately successful push to eject Tony Blair from office, is precisely what is being planned. Watson now thinks that what he did – his so-called “curry house coup” – was a bad idea. “Do not do it. Really, do not. If I had my time again, I would not have signed the letter in 2006. There. I’ve said it.”
As a sectarian Blairite, my joy at the sinner repenting is confined by the difficulty of answering the question that Watson’s recantation poses. His main reason for opposing letters, timetables, junior ministerial resignations and the like is that they damage the Labour Party. “Voters will see a party talking to itself while the country is shouting at it,” he said. This seems as self-evident to me now as it was 20 years ago.
The Unavoidable Media Frenzy
But the question is what Labour, or indeed any party nursing an unpopular prime minister, can do about it. Watson can say “Don’t sign foolish letters”, but even saying that is going to feed the beast of speculation. The implied question he poses is: how can Labour shut down the damaging reporting of leadership plotting? Part of the answer might be for Labour MPs to be more disciplined than Watson was, but this may be unrealistic. After all, The Times reported the possibility of a letter demanding a timetable for a handover, even though there isn’t one yet.
One suggestion, which is popular with activists, is to complain about media coverage and to point out that journalists are more interested in writing about leadership manoeuvring than policy. This is true, but irrelevant. MPs are always going to talk to journalists off the record about their “when, not if” predictions. Reporters and commentators are more likely to write about replacing the prime minister than the rollout of free breakfast clubs.
This is mainly because that is what readers want to read, even when the endless cycle of Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham keeps turning pointlessly. Even I am in the foothills of boredom commenting on this stuff – but it is simply not possible for Labour to shut it down.
Glimmers of Hope?
Something that might help Starmer would be if Labour does better than expected in the elections tomorrow, which is quite possible given the portents of doom that have been trailed for so long. Wales is a write-off – but if Labour can beat Reform in Scotland and hold onto a lot of English local councils (many of them have only one-third of seats up for election), it may be able to argue that all is not yet lost. Maybe other stories will dominate the news agenda, but the most obvious one will be the economic effects of closure of the Strait of Hormuz. That may not be Starmer’s fault, but he will take the blame for the consequences, no matter how often he and Rachel Reeves repeat that it is “not our war”, or how often they accuse Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage of having wanted to “jump with both feet” into the Iran conflict.
Deliveries Unrewarded
Nothing that Labour has delivered in government seems to give the general public a reason to keep Starmer. This may not be fair. He promised “more money in people’s pockets”, which official statistics say he has delivered (just, in real terms per head, on average). He promised to cut NHS waiting lists, and they are coming down (very slowly). And “lower immigration”, which has happened, mainly because of action taken belatedly by the Tory government.
He has delivered employment rights, renters’ rights, a phase-out of smoking, and a number of trade deals – and he has gained next to nothing by any of them. So there is probably little that Labour can do to suppress the speculation about the prime minister’s future. It will simmer on, sapping the government’s strength, until eventually there is a convulsion and a new prime minister emerges blinking from the ruins.
