“Bunker mentality” is a cliché, but no other phrase quite captures the paranoia, suspicion and fear which clings around a prime minister who is on their way out. There is widespread uncertainty, delusion and panic. Today, Starmer and his crew are in this mindset. There is always a crew, people who are known only to specialists and insiders, whose names are largely obscure to the wider public, yet who wield disproportionate influence. The crew, in many cases, are even more determined than the leader to tough things out and maintain their own positions. They know that, with a change of regime, their influence and status will be at an end. I sat in cabinet under two Prime Ministers – Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss – whose leaderships unravelled in different circumstances. Though the details are quite different, there are obvious similarities in the demise of each leader. The situation in which Starmer finds himself is similar to the fate of the leader he openly despised, Boris Johnson. In both cases, frontbenchers resigned; backbenchers very publicly expressed their discontent. A large proportion of the Labour party now say they want Starmer gone, just as a large portion of the Conservatives wanted Johnson out. Unlike under Boris, when Rishi Sunak and Sajid Javid quickly resigned, however, Starmer’s senior Cabinet colleagues have been more reluctant actually to leave the Government.
In situations like this, big beasts often fail to act decisively. Senior Cabinet ministers dither and delay, hoping junior members of the Government or even backbenchers will do the heavy lifting. This is cowardly.
On a personal level, the big beasts can be expected to gain the most from toppling the leader. But their status, their sense of pride in their high positions often makes them indecisive. They want, hypocritically, to keep their hands clean. The foot soldiers, unfairly, are expected to do the dirty work of regicide.
I suspect, in Sunak’s case in 2022, it was the comfort of knowing that his lifestyle and ability to pay the bills, so to speak, were not dependent on his political career. The personal financial circumstances of senior politicians are often overlooked by the media, despite minute scrutiny of tax affairs and the like. But the extent to which people in politics cling to their jobs, for purely practical reasons, is always underestimated.
Frankly, their salaries will take a nose dive once they leave office, so there is a natural desperation to cling on. It sounds grubby to talk like this about elected officials, but politicians are all too human, driven by the same concerns about keeping their livelihood as everyone else. Anyway, belatedly we hear that some of the Cabinet have found a backbone and have said it is time for Starmer to “consider his position”. We read that Shabana Mahmood and Yvette Cooper have been bold enough to tell the Prime Minister some home truths.
This is very similar to what happened under Johnson. Michael Gove was reported to have given Johnson an ultimatum, only to be fired hours later. Such farcical scenes did not, of course, alter Boris’s fate. There were equally absurd scenes, such as when my predecessor and friend, Nadhim Zahawi accepted the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer under Johnson, only to ask the PM to resign the next day. Starmer is showing Johnsonian levels of self-belief and stubbornness. This is in marked contrast to Liz Truss who seemed relieved to quit the job, to which, many believed, she had never been temperamentally suited in the first place. She seemed resigned to her fate in the way that Starmer does not. As for Johnson, he raged against the dying of the light. He would never surrender. He struck Churchillian poses in the ground floor offices at No 10, directly next to the cabinet room.
Starmer is, even now, striking an air of defiance. He will not quit. He will not surrender. He will rule from No 10 for another 10 years. He will turn things round and win elections. This is all, quite obviously, fantastical nonsense. But it is that iron self-belief which propels many of these leaders to the top in the first place, so it doesn’t surprise me. Starmer is defying his party to drag him out. There is a Mexican standoff, in which each party is pointing a gun at the other. The Prime Minister refuses to leave his post. Yet, his colleagues know, after the multiple humiliations inflicted on the Labour Party last week, they cannot allow him to stay.
In the end, the force of circumstances, the number of ministerial resignations forced Boris Johnson out. But we all now know that this was not a magic bullet for the Conservatives – nor the country.
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