3 hours ago
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Sometimes what you see is what you get. Usually in Westminster things happen for a reason. The logic may not be obvious but if you use your imagination you can come up with some logic for someone doing something that appears to be batshit crazy. But just occasionally, you reach a singularity on the space-time continuum where the laws of physics break down and nothing makes sense. A state of Platonic batshitness. Unadulterated madness. Where things seem crazy merely because they are.
Put simply: for no good reason, Keir Starmer and his team in Downing Street have chosen this week to mount a leadership challenge to himself. As if everyone inside No 10 has simultaneously had a collective breakdown. It’s an act of self-harm on an almost unimaginable scale. One that would leave lemmings gawping in amazement. Wondering why their destructive tendencies were so unambitious.
Late on Tuesday night, Downing Street came out fighting Downing Street in a story published by the Guardian. Cabinet members were plotting to get rid of Keir. Not just Wes Streeting, though he was the worst offender. But Shabana Mahmood and Ed Miliband, too. There were probably more. Bastards, the lot of them.
A coup was imminent. Not in May after the local elections but in a few weeks’ time after the budget. But Keir was ready for them. Oh yes! No one messes with the Little Man. Come and get him if you think you’re hard enough. Keir would fight back and Keir would win. The plotters were nobodies who would spook the bond markets. Only Keir could deliver us from evil.
Except … except it was all a morphine-fuelled fever dream. Paranoid fantasies of men and women lined up in a circular firing squad. There was no plot. Which isn’t to say that Wes and Shabana don’t have leadership ambitions. Both would be more than happy to take up residence in Downing Street if the chance arose. Just that neither of them have a campaign team primed and ready to go.
Keir has added two and two and come to five. The main reason that Streeting makes TikTok videos, talks about the NHS and Gaza is because he loves his job. Wes enjoys being Wes. No one will ever love Wes quite the way Wes loves himself. But that applies to many successful politicians. Keir sees competence – Wes’s ease with himself – and senses danger. Someone to be cut down for showing up Starmer. Likewise Shabana. Tall poppy syndrome.
If the idea was to look hard – think Gordon Brown going for David Miliband – it backfired badly. Starmer had managed to turn his leadership into a live issue. People who hadn’t been talking about whether he needed to be replaced now were. Starmer is a bit like Kemi Badenoch in this respect. Both have an unerring sense of political anti-matter. Doing the wrong thing at the wrong time.
What’s more, Keir managed to alienate almost everyone. Wes, Shabana and Ed, obviously. But also Labour backbenchers who just want a bit of steadiness from No 10. A sense of calm. Instead they just get panic. Bordering on insanity. As for the country at large, they just wondered what the hell was going on. Starmer has been in power for under 18 months and is trying to get rid of himself. Even Liz Truss didn’t come up with an idea like that.
To top it all, No 10 chose to launch its attacks on the evening before Streeting was due to do the morning media round. Something Wes loves doing. And is good at. Wes’s specialist subject is Wes and he was able to deflect all the leadership talk with grace and humour.
No, he had never thought of being leader. Mmm. Not entirely true but never mind. He had no idea what was going on in the addled brains of No 10. He was sure Keir would want to have a word with his team. Just time to get in the obligatory reference to The Traitors – it’s a new law that all politicians have to declare themselves a Faithful, to themselves if no one else – and he was out of there. Looking stronger than ever. If he hadn’t been a genuine leadership contender before this, he was now.
That just left prime minister’s questions for Keir to endure. Thankfully, Wes and Ed were otherwise engaged so he only had Shabana to ignore. She didn’t seem to mind that much. In any case, the prime minister looked understandably distracted. Even a man like him, almost devoid of political instincts, could see he was in trouble. Some days you just want to go home and watch the TV.
Now, it wouldn’t have been a total surprise if Kemi had misread the situation and used all her six questions to ask about the BBC. She is every bit as hopeless as Keir. And far more irrelevant. Nothing she says really matters. Her role these days is largely performative. But for once the Tory leader could spot an open goal that even she couldn’t miss. No wonder she looked so cheerful.
She went in hard. Did the prime minister agree with the health secretary that there was a toxic culture in Downing Street? He didn’t. Any attack on a member of his cabinet was unacceptable, Keir insisted. Especially one that he had orchestrated himself. Keir will be furious with Keir when Keir realises what he has done to Wes. You could feel the energy being sucked out of the Labour benches. This was going to be every bit as they feared.
Then the pressure ramped up a bit. A goodish gag about waiting lists – Wes had reached the top of his – and then more squirming. Did the prime minister have confidence in Morgan McSweeney, his chief of staff? “McSweeney, my team and I are absolutely focused on delivering for the country,” said Starmer. Not exactly the endorsement Morgan may have been hoping for. You also had to wonder just what Keir thought he was delivering. Chaos? That’s working.
This carried on for a couple more questions before Kemi appeared to get bored and moved on to the economy. For the first time, Keir looked vaguely relieved. If she had continued for the whole six questions on the self-generated hysteria, some real damage might have been done. A resignation from the Downing St team may have been inevitable. But Badenoch was keen to show that there was more than one person who could fuck up at PMQs. It was still an easy win for her. But it could have been a humiliation.
The rest of the session passed off uneventfully. Other than Rupert Lowe demanding the death penalty for foreigners. Nice. We ended with Labour’s Gill German offering Starmer a spot of R&R in Rhyl. “That sounds like an appealing invitation,” he said. The most honest he had been all day.
