Tulip mania was only ever going to end one way
Yesterday, I asked whether Tulip Siddiq would still be the City minister by the end of the day, and just as the sun went down we got an answer: nope.
Here in the City PM newsroom we shall miss the standing agenda item in our editorial meetings, checking the latest twist of an international corruption scandal and asking whether the minister was still attempting to ride it out.
Since the end of last week it was clear to us – as it must have been to many of you – that her departure was inevitable.
From the warmth of Keir Starmer’s response to her resignation letter it doesn’t look as if the PM thought it was inevitable at all. As constituency neighbours in London and close personal friends, Starmer stood by her right up to the point at which he simply couldn’t do so any longer. That point, by the way, appeared to be the formal launch of a criminal investigation into her by authorities in Bangladesh.
If Starmer is at all concerned by what must now be a serious diplomatic incident, he didn’t show it, insisting that “the door remains open” for Siddiq to return to government.
It’s worth noting at this point that, six months into Starmer’s ‘stability is the change’ government, he’s lost his Chief of Staff, his Transport Secretary and now a senior Treasury minister. I could add that these HR issues come on top of a collapse in business confidence, the evaporation of economic growth and panic in the bond markets, but that would be adding insult to injury.
Let’s look instead at the most immediate consequence of this mess; the elevation of Emma Reynolds to the City portfolio in the Treasury.
Siddiq’s replacement spent several years at TheCityUK, the financial services lobby group, prior to last summer’s election. She knows her way around the City and its policy agenda better than any other Labour MP and is highly regarded.
When Starmer announced his ministerial team last summer, some questioned why Reynolds wasn’t given the City brief straight away. Whitehall watchers suggested that Starmer and his officials were nervous about turning a banking lobbyist into a banking minister, though if they had risked some raised eyebrows they would have spared the Square Mile the soap opera of life under Tulip Siddiq.