It is now some time since people joked about Keir Starmer’s genie, a mysterious creature who granted him his wishes. I used to describe Starmer as a lucky general: Boris Johnson, for most of 2021 a popular politician, blew up his premiership in spectacular fashion – and the Conservative Party then chose the least suitable candidate possible to replace him.
Since Starmer won an unexpectedly big election victory, things have not gone so well for him. A few days ago, the prime minister announced to his cabinet that the government was embarking on “phase two”, moving on from fixing problems it had inherited to delivering for the people.
It was an attempt to move the story on from the government’s difficult first year, in the hope that his luck was about to change. But his luck only changed for the worse, and a new battalion of troubles emerged to drag him further down.
Starmer defended Angela Rayner, his deputy, after she was accused of dodging stamp duty when buying a flat by the seaside. Then she had to admit that she had, in fact, paid less tax than she should have done.
Starmer tried to make use of the disaster, bringing forward a major cabinet reshuffle that he had, Blue Peter-style, prepared earlier. He did actually succeed in minimising the follow-on coverage of Rayner’s resignation, and even wiped out a lot of the reporting of Nigel Farage’s annual conference.
But the impression lingered that his government of supposedly greater integrity than the Conservatives was, in fact, no better – and possibly worse, because it had been so sanctimonious about Tory “sleaze”. In the Commons on Wednesday, Starmer protested that Rayner had done the right thing by resigning when the standards adviser delivered a “clear finding” against her, and drew a contrast with Boris Johnson, who overruled a finding against Priti Patel, who is still on the Tory front bench as shadow foreign secretary.
But most voters will have concluded that “they are all the same”, and Rayner’s resignation also opened up a contest for the deputy Labour leadership that is likely to turn into a chance for party members to say how much they dislike Starmer’s “right-wing” policies. Lucy Powell, freshly sacked from the cabinet, brings Starmer the added headache of advertising her ally Andy Burnham’s attractions as a possible alternative prime minister. Just as Starmer has got rid of Rayner, always being talked up as a threat to his position, now he has a new rival in the “King of the North”.
Crises are like buses – they all come at once. In the case of buses in London, it is because they are all caught up in traffic jams because of the Tube strike. Labour promised to end the strikes that bedevilled the Tories, because it understands trade unions and knows how to negotiate with them. But after the doctors’ strike was settled, it was soon unsettled – and now, the capital is gridlocked again.
Meanwhile, Starmer has lost Peter Mandelson, our ambassador to Washington, a day after protesting his “confidence” in him. The prime minister really did not want to lose him, and certainly not over his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, when Donald Trump was about to arrive for a state visit – the same Donald Trump who is under siege for his association with the same paedophile.
Starmer’s plight recalls Alastair Campbell’s comment that nearly every week of Tony Blair’s government was Blair’s “worst week”. Campbell said that when he edited his diaries from the time, he felt exhausted by the breathlessness of it all, most of the stress having arisen from supposed “scandals” that he could barely remember a few years later.
Maybe Tim Allan, Campbell’s former deputy, who is now in No 10 as director of communications, will look back on the “hoo-ha” (one of Blair’s phrases) about Rayner’s stamp duty and Mandelson’s “best pal” in the same way.
But the difference is that Blair had a project of public service reform to provide a sense of direction, and a buoyant economy. Starmer, on the other hand, faces a Budget in 10 weeks’ time with no visible means of bridging the yawning fiscal gap. And there is no end in sight to the small boats crisis.
While those two deep problems persist, Starmer’s luck is unlikely to change, and he will continue to be buffeted by the weekly “hoo-ha” over the personal conduct of ministers, ambassadors, and whoever is next in the headlines.
