Over chilli and rice at a dinner for a group of Labour MPs at his Buckinghamshire country retreat of Chequers on Thursday evening, Sir Keir Starmer tried once again to reassure his backbenchers that the economy, and keeping their seats, tops his priority list.
The Prime Minister has spent the first week of the year struggling to hammer home how his Government is tackling cost-of-living pressures while Donald Trump’s imperialist spree dominated politics.
Every attempt by Starmer to talk about the economy – at a community centre in Reading on Monday, Cabinet on Tuesday and holding a baby in Bedfordshire on Thursday – was vying for attention with Trump’s musings about whether he prioritises the international world order.
“My constituents don’t care about Caracas; they care about which hour of the day they can afford to put their heating on,” as one Labour MP put it after the capture of Nicolás Maduro from Venezuela.
Keeping those backbenchers onside is key to whether Starmer sees out the year in No 10, even though Labour’s ratings in opinion polls have halved since their election landslide.
Unhappiness with Starmer appears to have peaked before Parliament’s Christmas break. Now in the new year, his allies see him as more secure in post. That’s in part because Labour Party managers have got better, but also because rebels have been firmly told to keep their grievances out of the press.
“We know who they are, and they’ve been isolated,” one senior MP and ally of Starmer said of the plotters. A second Government source said the MPs who have been mouthing off have been “put back in their box”.
As The i Paper reported back in November, some Scottish Labour MPs have been privately calling for Health Secretary Wes Streeting to stand against Starmer before May to avoid a wipeout in the Holyrood election.
A Government source said mutterings had been put to bed – even if only temporarily – after Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar “provided a well-deserved bollocking” to MPs north of the border.
“It doesn’t serve Anas, and it doesn’t serve council leaders around the country, for us to be in some psychodrama down here the whole time,” a senior Labour MP added from London.
According to attendees at a private meeting of Labour backbenchers in Westminster this week, deputy leader Lucy Powell – determined to shore up Starmer – told MPs they need to be “active participants in our own fate” and not offer a running commentary on the travails of the party.
But some of Streeting’s supporters think he risks losing first-mover advantage if he waits until later in the year when the field of potential successors to Starmer will widen. Others say Streeting should not move until the Prime Minister is much weaker, arguing that the Cabinet minister would not be forgiven for seeing off Starmer or letting a proxy act on his behalf.
But, with the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, not in Parliament, Streeting has become the default lightning rod of dissent, sometimes to his disadvantage.
“When people moan about Keir to the press, the public thinks they are acting on behalf of Wes. It’s not helpful at all because it ends up looking like he’s agitating when he’s not,” one Labour MP remarked.
If anything, Streeting has spent the early part of the year being studiously loyal to Starmer after having flexed his muscles in two interviews just before Christmas.
One ally of the Health Secretary said Streeting needs to get several “ducks in a row” before even thinking of a challenge. That includes ensuring his own seat is safe.
Last year, Streeting only squeaked to victory in his Ilford North constituency against a pro-Palestine independent candidate and uses donations to fund extra staff in Ilford to bolster his local presence.
Nonetheless, Streeting is not sitting idle in preparing for life after Starmer if May’s local elections go as badly as expected. “The Bat-Signal hasn’t gone up yet, but it is being loaded onto a van,” the source added.
“I can almost 100 per cent guarantee nothing is going to move soon,” one ally of the Prime Minister told The i Paper, when asked about threats to Starmer.
That’s because it’s incredibly hard to mount a leadership challenge; any contender would need 80 Labour MPs to back them, followed by a later vote of the party’s membership.
Another Starmer ally warned Streeting might find it harder to organise a coup to topple the premier than a candidate who could draw a large part of their parliamentary support from outside of the Government payroll, such as a successor from the backbenches picked by the soft left.
“A lot of his natural supporters would probably be on the front bench. All these people would be risking their [Government] jobs with no guarantee Wes could then convince the grassroots and win,” the senior Labour MP said.
“To trigger a coup, Wes would have to resign but also have 80 people prepared to do the same. And he’d have to organise that without anyone knowing. Then you’ve got to get this 80 to go publicly and walk into the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] office, to do it in the same hour. I mean, it’s just it’s never going to happen like that,” the source added.
All this adds up to Starmer feeling safer in post than at any time since his No 10 advisors went rogue and briefed against Streeting in November, although even his key lieutenants admit they won’t make predictions beyond May.
Labour MPs warmly received the embossed gold invitations to Chequers, particularly as they could bring a plus one. No 10 plans more dinners throughout the year. At the gathering, amid jokes about former prime minister Liz Truss, Starmer was also keen to stress he appreciates his colleagues’ hard work.
It’s not all happy families. At the sixteenth-century country pile, the ancient plumbing meant MPs had to brave the freezing rain on Thursday evening to use the permanent visitors’ portaloos in the dark grounds.
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Before playing host, Starmer had spent the earlier part of the evening on the phone discussing the future of Greenland with allies as Trump absorbed his focus once again.
At dinner, the Prime Minister was charming but appeared keen for the evening to end early, according to one attendee. One interpretation is that the prospect of the collapse of Nato had distracted Starmer.
Perhaps more likely, he wanted his guests to leave so he could catch the Arsenal-Liverpool game on TV.
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