For an operation that used to pride itself on its political instinct, Keir Starmer’s No 10 has been repeatedly caught off-guard.
There was the plunge in popularity in the immediate aftermath of the winter fuel decision, the decimation of loyalty among Labour MPs that led to the welfare vote catastrophe and the audacity of Andy Burnham’s open campaign for the leadership leading up to Labour conference.
Now the operation sees threats everywhere and is determined to put potential rebels in the spotlight and flush out rivals.
There has been a dedicated operation in recent weeks to smoke out a potential leadership challenge, with some convinced that one may come as soon as the budget is announced. The plan is to try to show up those who plot potential coups and give MPs pause about where such a dangerous road would lead.
MPs are being briefed about what an upset it would be for financial markets or how it could destroy relations with the US if candidates were to veer to the left in order to appeal to the Labour membership.
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, is seen as the biggest threat. But there are several potential leadership campaigns taking soundings within the parliamentary Labour party, including Burnham, who has not given up hope of succeeding Starmer, as well as Bridget Phillipson, Shabana Mahmood, and even Angela Rayner.
Senior figures in No 10 acknowledge that they seem to constantly veer between different strategies to take on their own unpopularity.
After a mutinous summer, Starmer managed to reassure some MPs with his conference speech, which was a passionate denunciation of racism and division fuelled by Reform UK and a defence of diversity that seemed heartfelt. But there is a widespread frustration that many of the promised changes of approach barely last a week.
Strategists brief that Starmer will be more publicly visible, take more questions from the public, travel the country more and spend less time on a plane. Yet it does not materialise.
Between party conference and the budget, Starmer will have been out of the country three times. He has not held a press conference since his trip to India – more than a month ago. Reform have held at least five.
His allies are convinced none of their good arguments are getting through about Starmer’s achievements. But the only major intervention by a cabinet minister in recent weeks has been a press conference from Rachel Reeves to pitch-roll for tax rises and a potential manifesto breach.
They also brief that he is personally fired up about anti-racism and making a case to reunite progressives, but after one good conference speech, the party still hesitates to respond or attack on the issue. It took almost five days for the public to hear Starmer respond robustly to the Conservative frontbencher Katie Lam on her case for deportations to maintain “cultural cohesion”.
Many of the MPs who were selected as Labour’s “high-quality candidates” were built in Starmer’s own image: ambitious, thoughtful, many with careers outside politics, loyal to the project of a centrist Labour government that prioritises power but cares about equality.
Many of them remain loyal to that project, but that project could just as easily have a different leader, because Starmer has never really attempted to cultivate personal loyalty.
It has been a real twist to see so many now with an appetite for regime change. They are not – by and large – people who came into politics to practise coups, but have instead been driven to the brink by the party’s woeful standing and their own very thin majorities. As one Labour MP said: “They could try not being paranoid and just try being better.”
