In the Whitehall version of the “Play that Goes Wrong”, everything that could go awry for the protagonist Sir Keir Starmer has done so. He faces yet another disastrous plot twist in the miscalculated appointment of Peter Mandelson as ambassador to the US. The programme notes version is that having failed a key security check in the Cabinet Office vetting operation, Mandelson was anyway given his business-class ticket to Washington, on the green light of the Foreign Office to please the PM.
Starmer’s enthusiasm for Mandelson had already become a liability when the Epstein files disgorged distasteful details of the shape-shifting politician-turned-businessman-turned-diplomat’s transactional friendship and business relationship with the late paedophile. Those details led to a police inquiry in the UK and another in the EU about Mandelson’s conduct as UK trade commissioner.
On the face of it, this could be curtains for a PM who is often described by those who have dealt with him as curiously missing in action for a man who wanted to lead the country. The spectacle of two of the country’s top civil servants desperately trying to get the information about the failed check to formally reach the PM in the last few weeks may perversely turn out to be helpful to Starmer.
When everything is a Whitehall farce, blame becomes distributed across institutions. So, the PM will tell the Commons today how shocked he was – in the way of Captain Louis in Casablanca – to find out the oversight equivalent of gambling was going on in Rick’s Casino and that the vetting had failed. But crucially, it will not cost the Starmer scalp, because his Cabinet is not yet prepared for what would follow. The news that Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham held talks in Manchester on Friday night will have reminded the Starmer centrists in this Government that in the event of a Keir exit, life could get very eventful indeed – and not in a good way for those who believe a soft-left turn would be a direct road to losing the next election. Nor would it help guarantee their jobs – a change at the top means more shifts further down.
The Mandelson affair, one Cabinet minister tells me, is a “sink hole that just keeps opening up over and over”. The question is who gets pulled into it and who can clamber out.
One thing to bear in mind is how scared the present top ministerial team and Starmer operation in No 10 were by the amateurish attempt by the Scottish Labour leader to unseat him in March – and how close the PM was to falling. That, according to one Cabinet minister who witnessed the events of the coup attempt up close, “reminded people who might have thought Keir’s time was up what it really feels like to be asked to pull the trigger and put your name to that. In the end, many of the 2024 intake didn’t dare to do that – and they won’t this time either.”
Starmer is also relying on a lot of others using their political capital to defend him – like the Technology Secretary Liz Kendall, stumping for him on the Sunday shows, despite having had her plans as welfare secretary undermined and finally torn up by the PM last year.
I doubt that Kendall would relish a polygraph on her scripted statement that: “On the big calls facing this country the Prime Minister has made the right calls.” Really? The first Reeves Budget dispirited business, the employment rights bill remains the subject of tense talks about its scope and limits because it was drafted to please the unions, the Defence Investment Plan is stuck in aggrieved ping-pong between the MoD, No 10 and the Treasury and the welfare, fuel duty and two-child benefit cap defeats of the original plans have emboldened MPs to think they, rather than ministers and the Chancellor and PM, run the policy show.
The “one big reason” why Starmer cannot be toppled which Starmer’s defenders are pointing to is that he was right not to commit the UK to joining strikes on Iran. They hope that this will underline his claim to be a steady hand on the tiller. This is a line boosted by the reckless handling of the conflict and growing doubts about Donald Trump’s ability to control the fallout. Indeed, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the minister personally closest to the PM, cited the same point in an interview with me a few weeks ago – highlighting “stable” Starmer as a counterpoint to global chaos.
Admittedly, just not going to war to please Trump is where most leading Nato allies are, so it is hardly a piece of Starmer’s exceptional judgement. But any port in a storm.
Leaders in trouble (see Rishi Sunak) rely on modest economic advances like the 0.5 per cent growth figure announced this week before the Gulf crisis effects kicked in. They can say the economy was gaining momentum before the onset of war, keeping inflation control on target. A senior Treasury minister this week was briefing ebulliently that getting a grip on massive UK borrowing was an achievement of “remarkable consistency”. These may be modest achievements – but they remind us that Starmer’s survival is reliant on his promise of economic revival paying off to a visible degree.
There is one sly plot wrinkle to this to bookmark, which a couple of ministers have raised in a stage whisper. Starmer serving two years fully in the top job (by September) is a decent innings and leaves the party enough time to switch the lead actor. This kind of caution infuriates figures like Blue Labour’s Lord Glasman, who has called for Starmer to quit now and save everyone the dithering – if the principal is not up to it, why would he be more so later in the cycle?
The “not yet” solution, however, suits those who benefit from being in Government and is also attractive to those who can’t decide if he should stay or go or who to back instead. That also makes the timing of any challenge harder to decide. Most likely we are in for a stay of execution, with a “last chance” option for an accident-prone PM. For a lead actor who does not want to leave the stage, however loud the boos and hisses, that’s a lot better than the curtain coming down.
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