Sir Keir Starmer will be hoping his first Labour conference as Prime Minister this weekend goes better than the last week has done. The PM’s top team is getting rather worried about a host of negative briefings about the government, with leaks including Starmer’s freebie problem and Sue Gray salary reports generating rather suboptimal press for the new Labour Prime Minister. It’s hardly the best start to the job…
The PM has struggled to shut down the stories, with Downing Street parroting a rather weak line about voters being more concerned with delivery over donations and Sir Keir maintaining that, despite outrage among Labour advisers over Sue Gray’s £170,000 wage, he is ‘not going to get into discussions about individual salaries’. Starmer has, however, decided to launch an inquiry into the ‘hostile briefing’ against his chief of staff amid growing concern over leaks. Ironically, it is to be led by top civil service mandarin Simon Case, who some believe is planning to step back from his role early over tensions with Gray – although the Cabinet Office has denied this. Quizzed on whether he was getting on top of the bad briefings as negative headlines continue to appear, a harried Starmer insisted: ‘I’m completely in control.’ When you have to say it…
The Labour leader has received much ill-judged support over his freebie fiasco from government ministers – like David Lammy, Yvette Cooper, Angela Eagle and even Business Secretary Gareth Thomas, who insisted it was necessary the PM accept a corporate box at Arsenal games to work. Er, right. Labour peer Harriet Harman was a little more combative, lamenting on a Sky podcast that the PM was ‘making things worse’ by attempting to ‘double down’ on his donations. Meanwhile, on the steady stream of anti-Sue stories leaked in recent weeks, Harman has called for a serious approach to the ‘extremely unfortunate’ move against Gray’s pay – going so far as to suggest it constitutes a breach of the ministerial code and the perpetrator should be sacked. Oo er.
And now Jess Phillips has waded in with her take on it all. Speaking to LBC this morning, the Home Office minister agreed that it was not a ‘good look’ for the PM to be accepting so many gifts, adding on the Sue Gray saga that: ‘It does seem like there is a problem with leaking… I would much rather people just cracked on with their jobs.’ Where’s the fun in that, eh?
Does Phillips feel like the Prime Minister has a firm grip on his party, amid the bad briefings ahead of his first party conference in government? ‘Maybe it’s because it’s a culture shock for me to go it to be in government, and to have anyone controlling me, frankly, but I do feel like they’re in control,’ the minister replied, before adding tellingly: ‘Sometimes I feel like they’re sort of over-controlling me.’ Ouch. Talk about overdoing it, eh?
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