Labour could oust Starmer, he could elegantly step aside – but without a plan, it will all be for nothing |
Will he still be there to see in the next new year? Noise about Keir Starmer’s durability quietens with MPs being away from Westminster’s tearooms and murmuring corridors, but WhatsApps zing to and fro just as busily: should he stay or should he go?
Any party that has fallen so far, so fast would doubt its leader. At minus 54%, Starmer has been declared the “most unpopular PM ever”, a title also held at one time by each of his four predecessors. Given how little Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Starmer have in common, whoever comes next may join their “most despised” club in this time of anti-politician volatility.
Internally, Labour wrangles over what’s gained from changing the face at the top and what’s lost in political stability after the mad Tory years of No 10’s revolving door. Post-Brexit referendum, changing PMs four times in eight years all but destroyed the once “natural party of government”. With everything “unprecedented”, history is no guide, old party loyalties are dying and new parties are making extravagant promises.
In the Times, Fraser Nelson, the recent Spectator editor, discourages Labour from ditching its leader, warning it not to “hallucinate about miraculous powers of a fresh face”. A new PM would need a new mandate, he writes: “Without this, cabinet rifts become harder to control; backbenchers harder to tame. Things........