The spectre of Jeremy Corbyn is haunting Labour.
When Starmer is forced out the party won’t pick Streeting or Mahmood. They will plump for Burnham or Miliband
The Prime Minister is doomed – that is the only thing Labour MPs can agree on. The party is steeling itself for civil war as Right and Left race to map out life after Sir Keir Starmer. It is the Left that is on the front foot. Unlike their dithering, moderate counterparts, they are psychologically and operationally ready for civil war – and determined to make sure that Starmer’s successor is one of their own.
In theory Labour centrists should be able to dictate the timing and tone of any leadership contest, orchestrating a smooth coronation of their anointed successor. As one veteran MP put it to me, while there are only about 30 “perpetually dissatisfied” Lefties in the party, the other 370-odd think things are grim but are keen to keep some stability.
And yet Labour’s Right-wing standard bearers, Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood, are struggling to amass followers. No 10 has been trying to persuade centrists that the Budget furore will blow over and it contains measures that will prove popular. The abolition of the two-child limit on welfare credit has gone down well and centrist MPs are sighing with relief that there was no rise in income tax.
True, Labour moderates still think Starmer needs to go. But they are caught in a Catch-22: haunted by the spectre of Jeremy Corbyn, they are so terrified that the Left will win a contest that they are reluctant to trigger the starting gun.
Streeting and Mahmood represent marginal seats. Some doubt that Wes could unify, given he is disdained by many colleagues as a “neo-Blairite stooge”. The consensus is that he has underperformed as Health Secretary. While many find Mahmood magnificent, they angst over whether her robustness on migration has upset too many people. Some Blue Labour MPs fear Shabana could face more voter prejudice as a Muslim in Reform battleground seats.
The Labour Right is also stuck in a Biden trap, saddled with a failing leader yet flummoxed by the question of what should follow. Shabana’s core selling point – that this is the “last chance for decent, moderate politics” and that if she fails, “something darker will follow” – has the stale feel of reheated Starmerism. Streeting meanwhile suffers from Boris syndrome; while his attack on Reform’s “miserabilist, declinist vision” has rallied some, others worry that the politics of sunlit uplands won’t cut through in stormy times.
While the Right bickers about its preferred candidate, the Left is ready for the fight. The radicals I spoke to extolled the unequivocal zeal of their heroes. One softly venerated Ed Miliband, the prodigal son who has been “on a journey”. Under him, they now argue, the party once felt “healthier, safer, happier”. Another thundered exuberantly about Burnham, King of the North, readying to march on London and “rip powers from the centre”.
The Left’s capacity to organise gives them an extra edge. The Labour centre outsources its thinking and its activism to the party machine. The party Left on the other hand is adept at building parties within parties with their own funding streams and networks of party members.
Andy Burnham’s campaign vehicle, the new Mainstream think tank, is working strenuously to build a case for “radical realism”, commissioning polling that they argue shows public appetite for Leftist populism. Their vision – for so-called democratic ownership of utilities, wealth taxes and proportional representation – is catnip to grassroots socialist intellectuals. It is the kind of “data-driven” utopianism that the PLP also finds hard to resist.
In other words the likelihood that Britain could end up with a radical Labour figure in Downing Street is surging. Such a turn risks deepening the country’s turmoil.
What has been so striking about the Starmer era is its blending of bleakness and blandness, persistent inflation figures, unyielding waiting lists, and rubber dinghies bobbing defiantly on the News at Ten. Fatalism has become a political art form, with every failure blamed on external volatility or the Tories. Britain’s slow-burn decline now risks becoming a precipitous fall.
Both Miliband and Burnham would be bad news for the economy. Miliband’s moral Leftism has the aggressive whiff of 1930s New Deal populism, aiming to humble corporate robber barons through a mixture of windfall taxation and greater regulation. His green prosperity plan – which aims to reach 100 per cent low carbon electricity by 2030 – would require vast public borrowing. His historic zeal for rent controls, if indulged,would gum up the housing market.
Burnham’s municipal socialism is dicey. His determination for a wealth tax will lead the prosperous to flee. His commitment to nationalising utilities – a project that would saddle the country with billions in debt – and defiance of the bond markets, could produce the Left-wing mirror image of the Truss implosion. His welfarist instincts would further disincentive work.
- DT.
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