Ask friends of Keir Starmer what they make of him and one of the first things they will say is that he can be incredibly kind. I’ve heard it time and again.
The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock described how Starmer was among the first to turn up on his doorstep after he lost his beloved wife, Glenys. “You don’t have time for this; you’ve got a party to lead,” Kinnock told him.
Then there was the former employee who started crying over a cup of coffee as she recounted to me how warm her boss had been when she lost a loved one.
The lawyer Parvais Jabbar, who has been a close friend of the PM’s for almost 30 years since they started working together to oppose the death penalty around the world, offered the same opinion. “On a personal level, Keir is the opposite of ruthless,” he said.
But on a political level?
Having spoken to more than 100 sources for my paperback Taken As Red, which tracks Starmer’s career from the moment he arrived in Westminster as a backbench MP through shadow cabinet roles to becoming Labour leader and then his first year as prime minister, I discovered his willingness to be politically ruthless, especially when it came to fixing things that had gone wrong. And right now it feels as if things have gone very wrong for the prime minister.
On the eve of the anniversary of his first year in power, Starmer has not just suffered a humiliating climbdown over flagship reforms. His party is also trailing Reform UK in the polls and his personal popularity has spiralled down.
Ben Walker at Britain Elects has compared Starmer’s position with those of his predecessors through their first year and showed that his -33 approval rating, 339 days into the role, was six points lower than Rishi Sunak’s (-27) at the same point and 77 points below Tony Blair’s (+44).
Although some of the problems have little to do with the Treasury (such as a failure to plan across government, or the freebiegate scandal), a number have emerged directly from No 11 Downing Street, including policies on winter fuel payments, inheritance tax changes for farmers and now welfare.
That is why the sight of the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, visibly upset during yesterday’s prime minister’s questions, and Starmer’s failure to fully back her in the moment (although his team later did), are leading people to ask how the prime minister will act in the face of declining popularity. Could he sack Reeves? Or his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney?
I know from studying Starmer that he is certainly capable of being ruthless. To that end, surely no one is safe.
Don’t forget that he actually moved McSweeney on once before. After Labour’s disastrous loss in the 2021 Hartlepool byelection, the key strategist was redeployed from Starmer’s chief of staff to campaign director. And he wasn’t the only one. McSweeney’s successor, Sam White, found his period in charge also brought to an early end, as did the next in line, Sue Gray.
They are far from the only examples of Starmer’s willingness to take harsh action for political reasons. Take the phone call he made only 20 minutes after becoming Labour leader. Jennie Formby, who had been general secretary for Labour for two years, had wanted to discuss how she and Starmer would work together in the coming weeks. We won’t, Starmer told her. One of her allies told me there was shock. Pushing out Formby, who had been unwell with cancer, was without precedent, they said, pointing out it took Jeremy Corbyn three years to replace the previous general secretary.
But after the controversies under Corbyn, including an antisemitism crisis, Starmer wanted to overhaul the party and did not hesitate when it came to sacking his leadership rival, Rebecca Long-Bailey, and then removing Corbyn himself. Starmer also forced through rule changes which meant that those on the most leftwing flank of the party would struggle to ever again reach the ballot for leadership.
So I don’t doubt that Starmer could act now if he felt it were necessary. Arguably there was a streak of ruthlessness in his decision to tell his biographer Tom Baldwin that he “deeply regrets” using the term “island of strangers” in a recent speech.
As for McSweeney, there are rumours of vulnerability, suggesting that he could be replaced by someone such as Liz Lloyd, Tony Blair’s former deputy chief of staff who joined Starmer’s administration last November as director of policy. But it’s worth remembering that Starmer credits McSweeney with last year’s election victory and for turning things around when he hit tough times in the past.
Would he really move against Reeves? In this case, there is definitely a different dynamic from those he has acted against in the past. Starmer has liked and trusted Reeves since a breakfast shortly before he became leader. And surely this has been their joint project, in which the most controversial decisions being blamed on the Treasury could also be laid at No 10’s door.
Sources tell me that the PM trusted his chancellor so completely over means-testing winter fuel payments that he nodded through the proposal based on the figures alone. As for welfare, senior figures under Starmer have known for weeks that it was going to be a major problem.
When it comes to this threatened rebellion that was unprecedented in scale, many blame the prime minister himself for failing to reach out personally to his own backbenchers and persuade them to remain loyal. Rebuilding relations with backbenchers is going to be key for Starmer if he is to recover.
For some close to Starmer, his loyalty to Reeves has been “frustrating”. I don’t doubt that it has wobbled and that he would be prepared to act. But he must also know that removing a chancellor carries the risk of turning all the ire towards him. As ever, he’ll deliberate and weigh the options very carefully. He is ruthless, that we know – but far from reckless.
Anushka Asthana is the US editor for Channel 4 News and author of Taken As Red: The Truth About Starmer’s Labour
