After Keir Starmer’s calamitous fortnight, the No. 10 official was reflective: ‘Some people say: “Your worst day in government is better than your best day in opposition.” That’s horseshit. Those people haven’t worked in government.’ The mood in Starmer’s top team after the resignation of Angela Rayner and the sacking of Peter Mandelson is, one senior party figure notes, a combination of ‘anger and hurt’.
MPs and ministers are openly discussing replacing the Prime Minister with Andy Burnham, the mayor of Manchester. But the outlines of a fightback are now visible. The strategy is one of carrots and sticks.
First the carrot. At cabinet on Tuesday, Starmer and several ministers became emotional as they discussed the introduction of the so-called Hillsborough law, which places a legal duty on public servants to act truthfully and avoid cover-ups. David Lammy, the new Deputy Prime Minister, said it gave a voice to ‘working-class people who haven’t been listened to’, citing the revolt of women at the Dagenham Ford plant which led to the Equal Pay Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, and the campaigners who brought about the Race Relations Act. Burnham was expected to use the failure to deliver the law to harangue Starmer at the party conference in Liverpool. At cabinet, Starmer also spoke about the weekend’s Tommy Robinson march, saying the battle against the far-right is ‘the fight of our lives’.
The most immediate threat to the Prime Minister comes from his own party. ‘Farage is prime minister if he wins the north,’ says one friendly minister, ‘and Andy is very popular in the north.’ However, many who remember Burnham’s rise, as a Cambridge-educated special adviser who held three cabinet jobs and was one of the most vociferous Blairites, find his recent incarnation as a downtrodden, provincial outsider who deplores Labour factionalism ripe for ridicule. Burnham’s performative northernness once extended to answering a question about his favourite biscuit with the line: ‘Give me beer and chips and gravy.’
Whenever Starmer has been in trouble, Burnham has made semi-unhelpful interventions from a populist soft-left position. These were not a serious threat until Rayner’s defenestration created a vacancy in the post of ‘who would lead if Starmer fell under a bus’. Now the mood among Labour MPs is that it might be time to push Starmer off the kerb. Burnham has backed a new soft-left pressure group, Mainstream, which attacked Starmer for running ‘a narrow and brittle political project’ which could ‘break’ Labour. MPs Andrew Gwynne and Graham Stringer are both said to be willing to stand down from their safe Manchester seats to allow Burnham to enter the Commons in a by-election.
‘The exam question Burnham needs to answer is: how do you actually do things differently?’
Downing Street are going on the attack against Burnham’s apparent belief that borrowing and spending more and soaking the rich through a wealth tax will solve Labour’s problems, branding it ‘not serious’. Senior figures say the PM is prepared to join the offensive. That is the stick.
‘It’s a complete fantasy,’ says one key Starmer ally. ‘Quite a few people in the party want to contest the argument that you have to have any trade-offs at all in order to govern. Government is constantly about trade-offs. They want to present a simple narrative in a way that Farage does, which is “We just impose a wealth tax and it’ll pay for everything – taking limitless money off people who are evil because they don’t need it”. Keir will get quite punchy on this.’
Expect the PM to lay out the choices in his conference speech to head off dissent ahead of Rachel Reeves’s Budget on 26 November. ‘Keir also has to deal with the argument that if Rachel just tweaks the fiscal rules, we wouldn’t need to make any hard choices. It doesn’t bear scrutiny or any kind of analysis.’ Throwing down the gauntlet to Burnham, the ally adds: ‘What’s your Budget going to look like? What wealth tax, against who, and how much will it raise? Do you really think you could be running in a leadership election while we’re in government talking about how we’re going to borrow £100 billion more? None of it’s realistic.’
In No. 10, the belief is that many in Labour don’t understand that the government’s fiscal position is already at the edge of what the City will tolerate. ‘Andy Burnham is the star striker sat on the bench,’ says another senior figure. ‘Of course the fans love him. But the exam question he needs to answer is: how do you actually do things differently, given these gravitational realities like the bond markets? His answers need to be interrogated to find out if they stand up.’
Even ministers who think Burnham would be a better ‘front man’ than Starmer want to see evidence of a credible programme. ‘He needs to show that he is prepared to talk to people who can do some of that thinking for him,’ one says. ‘If he runs on a straight Mainstream agenda, I’m out.’ There are also doubts Burnham would take a tough line on immigration. ‘[The soft left] think we can make people comfortable about boats and hotels by reframing the argument,’ a Starmer aide says. ‘It is wishful thinking.’
It is not a given that Burnham would win a by-election in a seat where Reform would mount a major challenge. And the King of the North is often indecisive. In 2010 he vowed to support David Miliband for the leadership, then ran himself, and ended up supporting Ed Miliband. In 2015 he dithered over a crucial vote on welfare cuts before abstaining, opening the door to Corbynism.
But Starmer has never been weaker. Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff, is damaged by his close association with Mandelson and by the resignation of Paul Ovenden, who quit as head of strategy over offensive messages he sent about Diane Abbott in 2017. No. 10 expects more damaging revelations, but no one I’ve spoken to thinks the PM will sack McSweeney: ‘Keir understands that to lose Morgan is to lose himself.’
Despite all this misery, deals signed this week during Donald Trump’s state visit will be worth ‘tens of billions’ and allow the government to tell ‘very good regional stories’ about investment outside London, which is usually Burnham’s schtick. The Budget is a chance to ‘focus on Laboury things that voters can feel good about’. A party strategist explains: ‘If Keir pulls off those things, then his position is very much strengthened.’ But he adds: ‘The danger is we are talking about pulling success out of landmines. They are still landmines.’ And landmines are much more dangerous than buses.
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