Tumult in Westminster reveals an uncomfortable truth for Labour

London: The painful revolt against Keir Starmer reached a point on Monday when the British prime minister had to address his Labour colleagues with an earnest plea to stay in the job.

Starmer, never one to show too much emotion, made a mildly passionate case against a leadership change he said would plunge the government into chaos and repeat the turmoil at the top under the previous Conservative prime ministers.

But he did not say what everyone knows. The main reason he is still in office is that his Labour colleagues do not have a compelling candidate to replace him.

That means this Westminster drama is a humiliation for the prime minister and an embarrassment for the Labour Party.

Hours after his morning address, the British press reported that more than 70 of his colleagues were calling for his resignation. The numbers against him are increasing each day, but there is a sore lack of commitment and courage among the rivals who seem to think they could do a better job at Number 10 Downing Street.

By Monday night in London (8am Tuesday AEST), there were background briefings to several media outlets about a move against Starmer in cabinet. These accounts said Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper had told Starmer to set out a plan to step down.

By Tuesday morning in London (7pm AEST), Starmer was telling his cabinet colleagues, at their regular meeting in Downing Street, that he would not go.

He put the onus on his rivals to prove they had the numbers to replace him. This was probably his best move in the circumstances, given he has clearly decided to hold out against the backbench rebels and their amplifiers in the media.

This tumult follows the catastrophic drubbing for Labour at council and regional elections last Thursday, when it lost votes to the Greens and even more ground to the populist Reform UK party and its leader, Nigel Farage.

Starmer has been a marked man for at least a full year, but his colleagues waited for the election results before taking their next steps.

It could be all over very quickly. But we have seen similar claims before. Time and again, the British press declares the prime minister is done for. Day after day, he remains in office despite the backbiting.

The embarrassing truth for Labour is that its alternative prime ministers do not look ready.

One leadership contender, Andy Burnham, is popular as the mayor of Greater Manchester but needs a seat in parliament to launch a challenge – something of a handicap. Another, former deputy leader Angela Rayner, fumbled her tax returns and seems equivocal about running. A third, Health Secretary Wes Streeting, is a good communicator, but his leadership experience is thin.

None of the three has uttered a word in public to rule themselves out. But neither have they been confident enough to declare they want the job. This is standard practice in spills, of course, but this saga has been on the nightly news for months, so their caution looks like weakness.

Who has the guts to move? So far, the candidates prefer to brief the media through their proxies. They seem to expect someone else – even Starmer – to hand the opportunity to them on a plate.

Can any of them actually do any better than Starmer?

Much of the British press has danced around this question because so many are so focused on Starmer’s flaws – his poor decisions, bland speeches and policy backflips. The replacements escape scrutiny. It does not help that some in the media are beholden to sources in each of the rival camps – and, in some cases, brazenly barracking for a spill.

Australians know how this plot works. The incredible thing in Britain is how slow the plot can be.

The moves on Monday brought things to a head.

First, Starmer made a significant policy announcement. His government will nationalise British Steel, a company close to financial collapse. He is returning to old-style Labour policies: subsidies for national champions, and a retreat from the free market to save essential industry.

Second, he set out a sharper attack against Farage, who was the key agitator for leaving the European Union in the Brexit referendum in 2016. Starmer was direct about the damage done from that vote.

“I want to remind you of what Nigel Farage said about Brexit,” said Starmer.

“He said it would make us richer. Wrong. It made us poorer. He said it would reduce migration. Wrong. Migration went through the roof. He said it would make us more secure. Wrong, again. It made us weaker.

“He took Britain for a ride… and now he’ll talk about almost anything other than the consequences of the one policy he actually delivered – because he’s not just a grifter, he is a chancer.”

This was an important statement about the cost of the referendum a decade ago. If Labour regards Brexit as a costly mistake, it has to find a way to recover.

Something else happened as well. The Labour MP who tried to force a leadership change, Catherine West, took a step back from the brink – and highlighted, again, the indecision within party ranks.

West, an Australian who entered British politics when she moved to the UK in the 1990s, said on Saturday she would stand for the leadership to force a ballot for the position if the cabinet did not replace Starmer by Sunday night.

On Monday, she chose a different course. West wrote to Labour MPs to assemble a list of supporters, and she called on Starmer to set a timetable for the election of a new leader in September. Rather than speeding things up, she slowed them down.

This timetable works for Burnham, who needs to find a volunteer willing to give up a seat in parliament so he can claim it in a byelection. Rayner favours Burnham’s return, which suggests a future ticket for a leader and deputy.

But the timetable does not work for the British public. All it does is drag out a leadership contest and weaken the government from within, while the country drifts.

This explains the final move on Monday: the leaks from cabinet. There is clearly a case within cabinet to replace Starmer and do it quickly.

There was an open question on Tuesday morning (London time) about whether a majority in the cabinet were for or against a swift change.

The great illusion, mostly untested by the media, is that a change of leader means a change of direction. In fact, all the signs show that Labour cannot decide its direction. The 403 Labour MPs are hopelessly divided on major policy decisions like tax increases, welfare cuts and how to pay for higher defence spending. One example was the way Starmer was blocked on welfare reform by his own MPs last year.

What would a new leader do?

Burnham has suggested changing fiscal rules in ways that would allow more spending - a natural argument because he is a popular Labour figure on the left. He has not been under any sustained scrutiny in the media to explain himself on this.

Unfortunately for Britain, the bond market, not the backbench, will dictate fiscal policy. The country’s net public debt has reached 94 per cent of GDP. The yields on 10-year British government bonds rose eight basis points on Monday to reach 5 per cent. Put simply, it is getting more expensive for Britain to pay the interest bill on its borrowing.

Any incoming Labour leader who attempted major new spending with looser fiscal rules might be popular with punters, but could easily spook the markets.

Labour MPs on the left might vote for a new leader in the hope they will get bold new ideas to spend more money on welfare and ease pressures on working families, only to discover that those policies are simply not possible. The Conservatives learned about the power of the financial markets when Liz Truss, their prime minister for 45 days in 2022, came up with a budget to please the base and ended up in a brief financial crisis.

Britain has plenty of challenges on fronts including welfare, defence, crime, migration, housing, and debt. There is no sign, so far, that a change in leadership will make any change to those challenges.

One of Starmer’s supporters, Labour MP Luke Akehurst, issued a sober warning on Monday about tearing down a prime minister who took power with a large majority at an election less than two years ago.

“The grass may look greener on the other side, but it rarely is, and the wall you need to climb over to get there is strewn with razor wire and broken glass,” he wrote.

This does not mean Starmer can survive when he has done so poorly. It is a reminder, however, that the leader is never the only problem. The parliamentary Labour Party is in a panic about its future, and the British press is in a fever of leadership coverage. And the country lurches from one crisis to another.

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