Brace yourself for the chaos that will follow Starmer’s departure
Anas Sarwar is not a name often seen in the pages of City PM but he’s earned his place after yesterday’s hastily announced press conference in which he called for Keir Starmer to resign as Prime Minister.
Prior to his intervention there had been radio silence from Starmer’s Cabinet ministers, not one of whom had popped up on camera or even social media to back the embattled PM. However, within an hour of Sarwar’s speech, they had all pledged their loyalty. It seems Labour’s plucky leader in Scotland has played the role of James Purnell, the cabinet minister who resigned from government in 2009 in a bid to bring about Gordon Brown’s resignation as PM. It didn’t work. Nobody followed suit and Purnell quit parliament the following year.
Sarwar’s intervention was seized on in Westminster as a major escalation precisely because people assumed it was co-ordinated; that other ministers would follow his lead. In reality, it was just an effort to bail out some of the water that’s swamping the Scottish Labour party ahead of the devolved elections in May.
Sarwar may not have brought down the PM, but the choreographed display of unity that followed his press conference should not be taken as anything other than a brief respite in a drama that will almost certainly climax with Starmer’s fall from office.
How could it not? The loss of his Chief of Staff, someone central to whatever passes for Starmer’s political project, was followed yesterday by the abrupt departure of his communications chief, his fourth in 18 months. The Mandelson-shaped net is closing in, with more damaging revelations a certainty. The Gorton and Denton by-election will show Labour MPs what they’re up against, and the May local elections are expected to be so bad that a leadership challenge would be the only logical response.
But then what? Angela Rayner as Prime Minister? Ed Miliband? God help us all. The Starmer project was vacuous, built on platitudes about growth without a clue how to generate it, but a genuinely left-wing PM who actually believes in a high-tax, big spending, net-zero, anti-business, socialist agenda (Rayner and Miliband both fit the bill) would see Britain keel over. Wes Streeting? His main quality seems to be that he’s good on the morning broadcast round, and he’d need Rayner in the tent where she could still cause damage, potentially as Chancellor.
Ignore the current political drama if you want, but brace yourself for the chaos that will follow it.