Rewatching the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express the other night, I was struck by the incredible organisational skills of Mrs Harriet Hubbard, played by Lauren Bacall. (Spoilers on the line ahead). Mrs Hubbard assembles an extremely disparate team of 12 potential killers with a grudge against the victim, books them all on a transcontinental train crossing where they all pretend not to know each other, and orchestrates a stabbing party, a dodeca-murder – improvising wildly as she goes because of the sheer last-minute bad luck of Hercule Poirot being berthed right next door to the scene of the crime. How did she go about coordinating this scenario, I wondered? Was there a WhatsApp group?
In real life, much less complex plots have a habit of leaking or hitting snags. Take the weekend’s revelations about the ‘Wangela’ scheme to unseat Keir Starmer as Prime Minister and replace him with Wes Streeting and Angela Rayner. Who is the Mrs Hubbard on Labour on the Orient Express? We know only that ‘allies of Wes Streeting’ have been pressing Rayner to throw her support behind him and join a dream ticket as his deputy. (Because obviously, a woman can never be Labour leader.) Streeting has denied all knowledge of this treacherous and disloyal behaviour by his allies – it’s all ‘completely untrue’ and a ‘silly season’ story, apparently. Allies of Rayner have let it be known that she’s turned down this offer – because, one assumes, she is hatching her own solo takeover bid after May’s local elections.
Let’s just stop for a moment to reflect on the charming loyalty and sense of honour being shown to Labour’s beleaguered leader – who delivered the party a landslide less than 18 months ago. One of the Labour party’s last remaining moral plus points was that it was squeamish about chucking out dud leaders. Beer-and-sandwiches camaraderie saw the party stick with Neil Kinnock for nine grinding years, after all. In this savage century, in stark contrast, the hilariously named Labour Together group – who anointed Starmer and ran him as their man – just helpfully conducted a survey of members on who should replace him. Charming.
But the thing that most confounds me about all this leaking and plotting – and others are said to be on manoeuvres too – is that such plotting never turns out very well for the plotters. Let’s look back at the annals of plotting. Who do we find in the grim gallery of backstabbers? Rishi Sunak, Michael Portillo, John Redwood, Gordon Brown, Michael Heseltine… Even on the rare occasions when a plotter gets the top job, they don’t enjoy it for very long. People just don’t like disloyalty. It was Mark Antony and John Major, respectively, who took the spoils from the plottings of Brutus and Heseltine. Sunak and Brown were swiftly rewarded for their knavery by the electorate.
What makes every plotter think they are the special one who can break this cycle? What is going through the minds of Wangela – together or separately – right now? Does Streeting really think, as he stares into the shaving mirror every morning ready to tackle that shovel of a chin, that his natural magnetism and charisma can overcome the obvious obstacles that have thrown so many backroom conspirators out into the wilderness?
He is perhaps being helped in this delusion by the very strange idea that has taken hold – a kind of collective mania, in fact – that he is a ‘good media performer’. Okay, given the easy charm and natural warmth of Starmer, he compares well to his leader at least. But then the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come could do a better a job at government PR than the current Prime Minister.
Even so, Streeting is not that likeable. He has a lot of face, resembling the Muppet loaf of bread or the Pillsbury Doughboy. I suffer from the same problem, which is why I grew a beard, but it’s too late for Streeting to do that now. And his voice has a dying fall at the end of every sentence that gets very tiring very quickly.
In his mind he is, perhaps, seeing himself as a beloved PM who will lead Labour to two amazing election victories and the country into a new golden age. But, in a leadership vote, party members would obviously elect Ed Miliband. How can Streeting not see this?
Then, there’s an even bigger question: who in their right mind would want to take over from Starmer at this juncture? It’s very hard to keep track of all the bad things bedevilling the country. I decided to make a big list of them the other day because I kept forgetting individual items, and it ran to a full side of lined A4. The thought of being in charge of sorting all of that – with absolutely no money to do it and everybody against you – is terrifying.
Plus, the plotter faces an extra task; he must believe he can unite every rat in the drain of his own party. Wangela can’t even unite each other. So good luck with that, comrades.
Comments