Labour leadership plotters should be careful what they wish for

Take it from me: leadership challenges are the beginning of the end. Barely twelve months after Conservative feuding led to one of their biggest defeats in electoral history, the Labour party have listened, watched, reflected – and seemingly learnt zero lessons.

Many arguments have been made as to why the Tories collapsed last year. Doomed flights to Rwanda, the rise of Reform, a high tax burden and prisons close to bursting have all been mooted. But as someone who worked in Downing Street across three administrations, the real reason stems from chronic divisions within the Conservative party: fourteen years of vacillating philosophies and rampant tribalism that manifested in not just daily displays of disunity, but all-too-frequent changes in leadership.

It is important to recognise how we ended up in this situation. Short-termism has grown over the last decade to fundamentally alter how our political culture functions in this country – with rancorous division and bitter infighting now almost engineered into the DNA of our governing classes. It has become individual first, party second, country third.

Take the rise of party factionalism. Loyalty under one single party banner began to fray for the Tories ahead of the Brexit referendum, with Downing Street explicitly authorising MPs from their own party to campaign against the incumbent prime minister on such an existential issue. Notwithstanding where one stands on the European Union, it precipitated the rise of innumerable party factions – Brexit, Remain, New Conservative, Red Wall, Blue Wall, Spartan, Wet. This hobbled the merry-go-round of successive prime ministers from David Cameron onwards, and ultimately proved fatal to Rishi Sunak’s efforts to keep his party united behind a single, coherent brand.

While all parties – including Labour – have ideological groups and caucuses, the increase in defections then and now has crystallised the reality that maintaining fealty to the overarching party label is regarded as increasingly futile. I remember well when one backbench 2019 MP threatened to defect to Labour if they weren’t instantly appointed His Majesty’s Ambassador to Tokyo. 

Technological change has only amplified these divisions further. When the pandemic struck and MPs were sent back to their constituencies, not only was genuine relationship-building between government whips and backbenchers rendered almost impossible, but the rise of WhatsApp groups rapidly provided an alternate means of remote scheming, unchecked by party enforcers. Such groups are now widespread across all parties, with physical presence in parliament no longer necessary for plotting. That has led to the conventional means of fostering party unity – such as inducements from party whips – no longer working. Remarkably – and somewhat depressingly – during my time in Downing Street, lurking on myriad MP chat groups provided the most accurate intelligence, which often dictated the government’s direction.

Furthermore, it cannot be overstated how much social media has accelerated the pace of our politics to the point where tactical decision-making has become the norm. The ease with which parliamentarians are now able to broadcast and circulate their personal views reinforces the perception that warring tribes are in constant conflict with one another. Not only this, but it corrodes the fundamental cogency of party labels themselves to the point where traditional affiliation to the main political parties begins to fragment. But more damagingly, it leads to constant panic in government ranks and prompts reactive, short-term lurching. We saw this last week with both Downing Street’s pre-emptive strike against a leadership challenge spectacularly backfiring and their latest U-turn on income tax – a policy they had not even announced.

Our politics has therefore been transformed from consensus-building and teamwork under a single, unified party banner into a gladiatorial contest. Our politicians have become institutionalised to work against each other in the pursuit of, at best, parochial ideological interests, or at worst, self-interested ambition. In nearly all cases, MPs are elected with the best intentions for their party and their country. But the system they now operate in has descended into one where name recognition and non-conformity to the party line arguably advances their chances of success. Where once a sense of basic familial harmony could exist, atomisation and rancour now dominates our political discourse. 

These trends, which naturally inhibit basic governing competence and delivery, are almost all irreversible in British politics – with the unavoidable consequence being the rise of radical ideas propagated by once-regarded fringe or populist parties. The fact that even the mildest gossip of coups and plots are looked at unfavourably by the financial markets – cited explicitly by Downing Street last week as justification for their attempt to smoke out potential leadership challenges – reveals the unfortunate economic legacy that years of infighting and leadership changes have bequeathed.

You would think that Labour would have witnessed these problems under our watch, and endeavoured to avoid a similar fate. And yet here we are. 

There is no doubt that many Labour MPs bear genuine grudges against their current leadership. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have made too many self-enforced errors in just a year, resulting in falling poll ratings and a decline in confidence from financial markets and international investors. Speaking as a Conservative, it would be easy to rejoice in the quagmire they have dug for themselves. 

But the perilous situation our country finds itself in is too important for Westminster machinating to win the day – with the only beneficiary being a Reform party which could do potentially irrevocable damage to our economy. The UK has deep-rooted problems which require long-term solutions: low productivity, over-regulation, a deep welfare crisis, a bloated public sector, the list is long. Yet these are unlikely to be addressed within the cloud of fast-paced short-termism that Westminster now operates in – and which is predictably precipitating calls for a change at the top.

Leadership elections – in which I was heavily involved and arguably benefited from – are both incredibly divisive and an incredible waste of time. Not only would a contest now perpetuate the growing tribalism within the Labour movement that will surely hamstring the remainder of their time in office over this Parliament, but it would also grind to a halt an already sclerotic government machine and prevent basic improvement in public services – which is what Labour was elected to do less than two years ago. The Westminster village has understandably become addicted to the intrigue and the never-ending speculation – a seductive live-feed of The Traitors broadcasting to the nation from Downing Street. But the stakes are simply too high.

The country is exhausted with the constant plotting, rumour-mongering and infighting amongst their political classes: all they want to see is basic delivery. As a Conservative who witnessed this first-hand, Labour parliamentarians should be careful what they wish for. A leadership election will be the beginning of the end for Labour.