The PM is a dead man walking. The only question now is who slips into his shoes.
Keir Starmer can’t survive – but Angela Rayner daren’t strike (Image: Getty)
In truth, Starmer was doomed the moment he set foot in No 10. As the Peter Mandelson vetting scandal has confirmed, he isn’t up to the job. We always knew he was as dull as watching his beloved Arsenal grind out a 1-0 away win, but we were assured he was competent and honest. He isn’t. This is a supposedly top lawyer, who doesn’t ask the right questions. The PM completely failed to probe one of the most suspicious politicians this country has ever produced in Peter Mandelson. A man dubbed the Prince of Darkness, for heaven’s sake. Yet Starmer didn’t even ask for his security vetting results. Either that or he did ask, then misled us all last week.
As for being honest. What a joke. Starmer is so up to his neck in sleaze, it’s threatening to choke him. He combines that with the disreputable trait of repeatedly throwing others under the bus to save his own skin. We saw that on Thursday, when he made Foreign Office chief Olly Robbins the fall guy over Mandelson. Robbins may have his revenge on Tuesday, when he’s been asked to face MPs. He should do us all a favour and stick the knife in. He’d be doing the PM a favour too. Starmer could find a job that pays better, and with more freebies. He likes those.
Robbins isn’t the only one poised to strike at Starmer. The Labour Party is full of them. Starmer has more knives aimed at his back than Julius Caesar. Wes Streeting, Andy Burnham, Shabana Mahmood and of course Angela Rayner all think they could do a better job than the PM. Obviously, that’s not a high bar.
Will Starmer resign on Tuesday? I don’t think so. The man doesn’t have the wit or imagination to grasp what a disaster he is. There’s also a war on, which he’ll happily hide behind.
Then come the local, Welsh and Scottish elections on May 7. Labour is braced for a bloodbath, with polls suggesting the party will be smashed into fourth place. If they’re right, Starmer should do the decent thing and walk on May 8. But he’s not a decent man, so he won’t. He’ll cling on, even as the sound of sharpening knives puts everyone’s teeth on edge.
That leaves Angela Rayner in a bind. She and her rival leadership contenders would happily stab Starmer in the back, but none wants to be caught doing it.
Last week, before the Mandelson row blew up, Rayner actually stepped back and pledged loyalty. She had two reasons. First, she wants Starmer to take the full hit for next month’s election massacre. Move too soon and she risks sharing the blame.
Second, there’s that awkward stamp duty ‘scandal’ hanging over her. The HMRC investigation is still ongoing, and the outcome is unknown.
Rayner must rue the day she fell for the view from that luxury £800,000 seaside flat in Hove. Voters will wonder how she raised so much money, then baulked at a £40,000 tax bill. The hypocrisy is horrendous. Rayner is an advocate of punitive taxation, until she has to pay. She might already be PM if she’d coughed up.
Rayner must be fit to explode watching this chance go begging. Wes Streeting and Andy Burnham will be boiling too. They have their own reasons for holding back. Streeting is too sensible for Labour MPs to back. Burnham is too silly.
If none of them has the nerve to strike, Labour and the country could be stuck with Starmer all the way to 2029. The PM certainly won’t fall on his sword. That would require a shred of honour. And as the last few days have shown, the PM doesn’t even have that.